What's the stupidest thing you've ever done?

Back on topic: (in chronological order)

1. On vacation, told my dad (when I was 12) -- in response to repeated questions from him if I had loaded film in the camera before leaving the hotel room -- "Yes, of course!!!" and then discovering an empty camera hours later.
   
2. Shot a rush job for publication that night, rushed back to the darkroom to process the film and poured FIXER into the tank first (instead of Developer!)...had to drive back and reshoot and start the whole cycle over. (Yeah, I made the deadline, no thanks to my own stupidity)
   
3. Trusting ETTL at my youngest stepdaughter's wedding last month, only to discover (what I already knew to be true !) that the poor electrical contact of the flash in any off-camera cord would cause ETTL to fire at full power and overexpose... all of the first-dance shots later that night. I normally put the flash in Auto, not ETTL, when using the off-camera cord for that very reason! (Yes, after 40 years of film shooting, I normally do NOT chimp my photos to verify equipment is not screwing up!...and I trust myself technically so the need for chimping is minimal.)
   

Went to process a roll of 220 flim taken on our honeymoon, as I was pouring out the developer I noticed it was a odd color. Truns out that you can't use B&W developer on color film.:o The wife was not happy with me.

OK a real one. Shooting film I did a lot of experimentation with B&W, zone system with a 4 by 5 field camera. When it came to the SLR just the cost of processing I never got out of P mode to practise. Had no real desire back then.

Then came the DSLR so trying things out was easy. Went to my first air show about 7 years ago and was real pumped. Instead of setting the shutter to 1600 I set ISO to 1600. With shooting into the sun made for some nice noisy images. Tough to get that crisp look after NR. Took about 500 images before I realized what I had done.

For me it was when I was shooting stunt bikes. I had bought a new CF card a few days before and had left it in my bag ready for the event. Halfway through shooting I had filled my first card so grabbed my new one, little did I realise, it needed to be formated before it would work. I got ready to shoot the main stunt jump and... Memory card error! I had to find a spot to sit down and only then found out I needed to format it on my camera, 5 minutes after the display finished.

So far, the stupidest photography related thing I've done is ignoring POTN members' tripod advice. I'm on my third tripod after joining POTN and finally got it right (RRS TVC-34L + BH-55 Pro). I really should sell the other two but I can't seem to motivate myself to sell my mistakes to someone else.

I'm 60.... I don't want to think of the stupidest non-photography related things I've done over my lifetime.

Was shooting pics across the Czech border back in the 80's and got a call on the radio. As I sat in the Jeep to take the call, I set my camera and tele lens on the roof of the Jeep. After the call I closed the door and off we went. The local polizei caught up with us a bit later and handed me the several pieces of junk that had been my Canon AT-1 and lens.

I loaned a vintage Rolleiflex Carl Zeiss TLR to my almost always careful and reliable brother.

https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1330941

Calicajun wrote in post #16309097
Went to process a roll of 220 flim taken on our honeymoon, as I was pouring out the developer I noticed it was a odd color. Truns out that you can't use B&W developer on color film.:o The wife was not happy with me.

With some color films you should have got a "printable" B&W image. Sadly, not with all of them!

My first experience in the darkroom at age about 13 I decided to develop my own B&W film instead of using the corner drugstore. Using a red safelight as they did on TV made it easy to load the film on the reel... ; D

drove in one way for 7 kms.

juegos de tragamonedas

elijahmaxwell wrote in post #16327084
drove in one way for 7 kms.

That is not bad at all. Did you read about that women somewhere in the US that went to pick up a friend at the airport? It is usually about a one hr drive. She set her GPS and followed it for 8 hours before realizing something was not right.

What's a little stupidity between friends? I would genuinely forget my own head were it not screwed on so tight so the following shouldn't really surprise ...

- Leaving a £100 tripod on a train. Not even realising until about a week later, eventually working out where I last had it therefore where I must have left it ... no surprise, it wasn't still there.

- At a theatre festival, decided to give my batteries a little freshen up before an evening show. Went to the first show with no batteries. Having quickly made up an emergency reason to go back to the office instead of shooting the show, I had plenty of time to get the batteries before the next one. Did I remember to do that, or did I wander on over to the next one with no battery? (I shot both shows the following day and did so well. I'm actually a decent photographer when I remember things that make my camera work.)

The following I am really glad I don't have to try and forgive myself for ...

Not backing up my work for nigh on two years. I used to be a back up freak and have it as a part of my workflow, or in the case of a month long theatre festival, spend an additional week backing everything up. One year I didn't, and with every new shoot thereafter the task just became more and more daunting and time-consuming.

For a chunk of that time I wasn't doing much professional work having moved countries and taken a while to get the ball rolling again (and it was after completing my first big professional project that I made sure to back up), but it could still have been a big loss of photos.

Going to a sports festival well geared..... except forgetting to put back my SD card in the camera AND the bag, leaving all of the cards at home....

At one time I'd go shooting with two Canon 1D4 cameras.

I took them both to an all day event on Saturday, and filled up the cards.
Got home Saturday night and transferred the photos from one camera to my pc.
It was getting late and I had to go to bed, so I didn't do the other camera.

On Sunday morning the event continued, so again I took both cameras.
The cards were filled, so I formatted them for another day of shooting.

It wasn't until much later that I realized I had not moved the images from
my second camera to my pc.