Everyone's always writing about how wonderful they are, here's a little error that cost me a shot of a lifetime. Last Sat. while shooting a wedding, the bride and groom directed the Limo to stop at at a large discount department store to get a music CD to play at the reception. Suprized by this, I grabbed my motorized M7 with 35/1.4 ASPH. and trailed them in for some B&W candids. The entire wedding party was there, and they put the bride with flowing dress into the shopping cart. and sped down the asiles. A spontaneous photo-op of a lifetime!!!! I zoomed out front and shot like crazy... until the store manager firmly informed me that NO PHOTOS! were allowed. Smugly I retreated, firm in the knowledge that I'd already got the shot. Then, glancing down at the frame count, it showed 40 frames????? OH NO, NO FILM! And I couldn't go back in after the manager incident. The moral to this story beyond wishing I had a brain? Motor drives don't provide feed back. If I had been thumb winding the camera, I would've known it was empty right away. Oh well....

-- Marc Williams (mwilliams111313MI@comcast.net), May 02, 2002

Answers

Marc, I feel for you mate, I do. I have many similar experiencee that I care not to delve into as I don't enjoy recalling my nightmares.

-- Kristian (leicashot@hotmail.com), May 02, 2002.

Sorry to hear that Marc!, but how would thumb winding tell you if there was film in the body (apart from when U have reached the end?) - as a precaution I always check that then film rewind knob turns when winding my next frame when I havent used the camera for a while, as I always forget if there is any film in the camera. Also shaking the body is a good tip, if theres a film, the body rattles a bit! ;)

-- Karl Yik (karl.yik@dk.com), May 02, 2002.

Marc,although I found your little anecdote amusing,I feel I should tell you that I was laughing at you,not with you.It's like coming in here and admitting that you forgot to put fuel in your car or you accidentally set your house on fire.

" Hi folks,I have a funny story I'd like to share with you.I over-fed my tropical fish yesterday and they all died....."

-- Phil (philkneen@manx.net), May 02, 2002.

Phil, you should pay more attention to the punctuation. It looks so much better when you put spaces after the commas and full stops, believe me. Try it some time.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), May 02, 2002.

yeh , you may be right , I'll give it a go. Is that better ?

-- P h i l (philkneen@manx.net), May 02, 2002.

Simple when you get the hang of it, isn't it.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), May 02, 2002.

Karl, to me there's definately a "feel" to an M wind when there's film in the camera. No feel with a Motor winder. Phil, you must be one of those perfect people that only talks about how wonderful they are. Must be nice. By the way, I wasn't laughing at all -- with OR at me. The note was to caution that under pressure mistakes can happen, especially with a new piece of equipment that doesn't give you the feed back you may be use to.

-- Marc Williams (mwilliams111313MI@comcast.com), May 02, 2002.

What you are also relating is, that at a wedding, pressure is intense & there's no room for error. You've got to be dead-on. The subtle stuff, like thumb pressure & film resistance, is lost w/ a motor. And your own focus is so intense that some things are overlooked. Reminds me of one where I shot a bunch of bride's maids in a museum setting, using an 80A filter, then rushed outside where the groom's men were waiting, & shot 3 or 4 photos before realizing that the damn blue filter was still on the Summicron! Thank god for PS, which turned those photos into sunshine & saved me. Great story, Marc!

-- Patrick (pg@patrickgarner.com), May 02, 2002.

I too made the same mistake once, but with a manual transport camera. I had been wondering all the time why my manual transport went so smooth all of a sudden. :-)

Reinier

-- ReinierV (rvlaam@xs4all.nl), May 02, 2002.

I may have related this before but here goes. 27 years ago I was racing cars here at Edmonton Speedway. I was just getting into photography and had my first camera, a nearly new Yashica Lynx 1.4 (great lens for a fixed lens camera BTW). Because I was a member of the local sports car club I was allowed access to the major events, one of which was the Can Am (Canadian-American Challenge Cup) race. I had a great spot on a fast righthander that had a Dunlop footbridge in the frame. Denny Hulme and Lothar Motschenbacher touched at high speed, Hulme flipped his McLaren and I got about 3 perfect frames of the car flipping, and I was within 30 feet. I still wonder how the photos would have been if I'd taken the lenscap off...

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), May 02, 2002.

My own version of this was quite recent: I had photographed a victim of a shooting incident who was partially paralysed and had great trouble walking to where I wanted to photograph him, and had already left the house when I discovered that the back of the Leica was open. So I had to go back and ask him to do it all over again. He wasn't at all bothered, but I felt like a fool. Then when I unloaded the film I found a huge fibre across the gate. Fortunately the picture came out OK, but it did seem as if my own stupidity and bad luck were conspiring against me.

Another stressful time was with rapidwinders during a wedding. I hadn't mounted the tulip in the rapidwinder baseplate and the film repeatedly didn't load. Fortunately I was just assisting another snapper.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), May 02, 2002.

Oh Marc!

I've been there. The guy on a bicycle with the cat on his head. I pointed me Hexar AF, I pressed the button, I thought I had it, I didn't have it. That for starters.

A truly wonderful New York street photog who uses an M4 and M3 and uses color negs has a good philosophy. If her misses a shot he files it away in his brain and when something like it comes up he is ready.

Oh where oh where is my cyclist with the cat on his head....

There will be other weddings and other wild shots. Don't worry.

All the best,

Alex

-- Alex Shishin (shishin@pp.iij4-u.or.jp), May 02, 2002.

Me and my first Leica, an M3 with DR, up in the farm country in NY state, almost sunset, looking through a break in the trees to see a beautiful field on a hill just baled with the large round bales of hay, a scene out of a Steiglitz memory. My last frame of film makes itself obvious by disconnecting from the spool that I just bulk loaded. That pic and the light is burned in my brain, and the fury of blowing it.

-- Emile de Leon (knightpeople@msn.com), May 02, 2002.

That's unfortunate, Marc. But I'm wondering why a discount department store would claim to have a no photo policy? Are they selling illegal drugs and weapons in there?

-- Jim Tardio (jimtardio@earthlink.net), May 02, 2002.

The film didn't catch on to the spool properly at a wedding I was at 20 years ago. Pity it was my wedding, and my camera which my brother was using to take the main pics.

-- Paul Hart (paulhart@blueyonder.co.uk), May 02, 2002.

And then ofcourse there was the time I loaded a 350cc tank with only 250cc of developper. Took me a long time before I figured out why the upper part of the film didn't develop well.

And with my Hexar AF in silent mode I regularly think I take a picture and after the moment found out the counter didn't increase.

-- ReinierV (rvlaam@xs4all.nl), May 02, 2002.

Marc, funny (or is it?) story indeed, but I'm a bit surprised that you didn't even see the warning in the M7's viewfinder. Doesn't it give some kind of flashing dot or number when there is no film, or when the ISO is set different from the DX code?

Olivier

-- Olivier Reichenbach (olreiche@videotron.ca), May 02, 2002.

>>>During College I got sideline press passes for the football games. Kodacolor was about 80 ASA and print film took the same time to get processed as slide film!; so I used High Speed Ektachrome slide film asa 160; pushed to asa 400 with the "special kodak pushing ektachrome envelopes"....Tri-x was asa 400 so both cameras used the same exposure. I used a chrome Nikkormat for color slides and a black Nikkormat for Tri-X....Half way thru the game the brand new Nikkormat's shutter jammed; but I was able to rewind the partial exposed 36exp roll...When the high speed Ektachrome ran out for the chrome body; I reloaded the half used roll of tri-x in it..I advanced 18 blank exposures to get past the used dozen + exposures....

GOOF #1 was not placing a 52mm lens cap; & setting the shutter to 1/1000th for the first couple of "get past the exposed frames" part.........Then the best plays and photos of the game were shot!.......

GOOF #2: After the game when getting into a van I bumped my camera bag and couple of rolls dropped out on the asphalt......Of course the best photo roll hit long end of 35mm spool first... To my horror the "Lets save money by bulk loading tri- x" Kodak SNAP-CAP cassette popped apart; and the 36 exposure roll unwound in broad daylight; in just a few seconds...Kelly

PS I had a roll of 120 film do the same thing years ago...it was one of those metal spools....Also I saw a friend long ago drop a 620 roll; and the round end flange came off...The processed film from the roll had light fogging at the bottom edge thru out the roll when processed..Kelly

PSS the one week old brand new Black Nikkormat was sent back to Nikon for warranty repair and fixed.....It jamed again after 2 rolls of film....Again it went to Nikon for repair....One month after it was returned from Nikon it got stolen while in a friends car....I do not miss that black body; but miss the new Nikkor 105mm f2.5 lens bought on sale when the local camera store closed...Got the 105 for 125 bucks and it got stolen 2 weeks later....My friend parked in a very bad area of town at the next away football game....they broke the window in the the car to get the Craig PowerPlay 8-track player....

They stole everything in the car but one black tape that was on the black carpet.....Gone my Camera & lens;Vivitar 202 flash that would like to melt down; buddies Minolta lens; both suitcases & clothes; spare tire; jack; all the contents of the glove box; including the owners manual! Before we left the car for the game I told my buddy "Dont you want to slide out your Craig (8 track player); and place it in the trunk with everything else?" Reply "You are being paranoid; and should learn to trust people more".....Note; this craig had a quick disconnect; and was designed to be quickly slid out of its mounting track!........During the game we had 4 touchdowns right by our closeup seats! MANY people said "How come didnt you brenn your camera?"

-- Kelly Flanigan (zorki3c@netscape.net), May 05, 2002.

At least you got the world's first-ever zoom lens for the M7!

;-)

-- Andrew (mazurka@rocketmail.com), May 08, 2002.