On Monday we went to a rockin’ Memorial Day party hosted by one of our friends. There was lots of food, music, and entertainment. A good time was had by all. I spent the first hour or so of the party wandering around with my borrowed Digital Rebel (again, courtesy of Lou Ann) and 50mm prime lense snapping shots of kids playing, adults chatting, hosts hosting, waterfights, food, toys, etc. I was having a great time snapping away and had probably taken over 100 photos (in my exaggerated version of this story that number skyrockets to 200-300).
I took a shot of the folks at the Rock Band station, and, for the first time that day, looked down to check the preview of the picture to check the exposure, which I wasn’t sure was quite right. I saw the following message:
“^@$*!*@#$&*!!! I had left the @&*%&@!#$* memory card sitting in my computer from the last time I had pulled pictures off of it. I can’t even begin to express my disappointment. I was excited about the pictures I had taken. My level of disappointment was such that I couldn’t bring myself to take up the generous offers of “please, use MY camera” from the host and a close friend.
All you amateur photographers out there, please tell me you’ve done this at least once. Please tell me this is a right of passage that you all go through at some point. Please tell me that you look back on it now and laugh. It made me grumpy for a full hour or two after I made the discovery (my apologies to Kate and Ellen, who caught the brunt of the grumpiness).
Nope. BUT, I did leave the camera on ISO 1600 once after taking pics of Claire reading a book in the dark with a flashlight. Had lovely grainy pics the whole next day…portraits of a friend’s daughter. Had to invest in NeatImage just to save face. Fortunately, it worked like a charm… 😉
Ummm… I do a few times a year. But I usually notice when I can’t take the first pic. (There should be an option in one of the menus “shoot without card” make sure that’s set to off and then it won’t act like it’s taking a picture and you’ll think hmmm something is wrong a lot quicker.)
I’ve also shot outside in the snow after using a custom white balance setting and had a series of blue pictures I was not able to make unblue. And like Amy, I’ve lost some to the wrong ISO too.
I feel your pain, buddy. It’s along the same lines as forgetting to remove the lens cover, no film in the camera, and finger over the lens.
My own private bitterness, was that my super duper HD video camera, the Canon VIXIA HV 30, that I ordered to film the Luau came the day after the party. Grrr!
Since you asked for it, here is a movielette using the new Canon VIXIA HV30 HD camcorder. I call it The Afterglow. I couldn’t host it on Flickr ’cause I don’t have a Pro account! I had to compress it down to upload it, so all of the HD glory doesn’t shine through online, but rest assured, it’s there!