Stupid is as Stupid Does!

When he was about 18 years old (early 1970s, give or take), a former co-worker was asking questions in a local camera store. The woman behind the counter (herself a pro photographer) asked him why he needed to buy this stuff. He said he was shooting a wedding. Her reply, “Don’t do it. You’re not that good.”

Brutal, but as he later admitted, brutally correct. If he had listened much pain would’ve been avoided.

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Ah - same here. But I was the primary videographer and it was my daughter’s solo performance. Recorded everything else except what I really needed and wanted.

Just to clarify - during the whole recording of the solo - I was fully convinced that I am actually recording. I thought the camera had a hick up or the recording got deleted somehow. Tried even to look for deleted files - recovery program.

At the end recalling exactly step by step - I realized I was making sure that histograms are correct (while recording - on a canon 70D) and it hit me like a stone - the histograms disappear during the recording. Quite a lesson.
I was able to take the video from another parent so … not everything was lost.

I’ve finally scrolled to the bottom of the thread — PHEW! :wink:

On second thoughts, all of those images are amazing; I’d be more than a little embarased to post any of mine. I enjoy photography a great deal, but I’m nowhere near in the same league as you guys. I don’t tend to put much of my stuff out there so to speak (none of it’s really good enough). Though I am planning to at some point — when my photos don’t suck. :slightly_frowning_face:

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Come on, I’m sure they’re not that bad! :smiley: (no stress though - entirely up to you of course!)

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Well, I’ve been at it for almost a decade… and I haven’t managed a keeper yet. Maybe I’m just hard to please. :wink:

It kinda sounds like it… :wink:

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Had I known beforehand that I’d be the main contributor to this thread, I’d never have started it — I just keep doing stoopid stuff! :wink:

I’ve just spent all yesterday evening and most of today trying to solve an issue that didn’t exist. Long story short, I was adjusting the colour mixer in RawTherapee (and tinkering about with a few other minor changes) and thought I’d thrown my shadows out of whack as a result. I spent hours and hours trying to compensate for it to no avail. Then I remembered: I was messing about with the vegnetting filter the evening before, and I forgot to turn it off. :clown_face:

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A friend introduced me to film photography. After two rolls, we once again met up at his place to develop the film. Sure enough, the second one was entirely blank, as I had inserted it incorrectly.

I thought it hilarious, he didn’t. Kind of a shame.

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This one is hard to beat.

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That it is, @Ofnuts! That it is! :rofl:

Ouch …

Fantastic. I don’t know if the whole thing is a spoof but the answer is also hilarious: “The entire strip of film is sensitive to light – and extremely sensitive to light, at that. The camera itself can be thought of as a simple light-tight box, protecting the film from light”

When I’m optimistic I think that this is the StackExchange management trolling the group to see if the mods and regulars react politely. When I’m realistic I think that this is unfortunately a real question. Film photography seems to attract more than its share of misinformed people.

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There is an apocryphal story in the IT industry about someone contacting a help desk because their computer monitor is not working.

The person on the help desk goes through all their scripts, but can’t solve the problem. In the end, he asks what the model number of the monitor is so that he can get a new one sent. The person on the other end of the phone says he can’t tell, because all the lights in the building are out.

The help desk person asks if the caller still has the boxes for the computer and gets an affirmative answer. He tells the caller to repack and return the computer, because he is too stupid to have one.

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One time I put my camera bag down. I was overseas in a place most unlike my home where things don’t just go missing so quickly and so near the immigration desk. Lesson learned: keep camera bag on person while in airport.

In college I allowed a photog to place their own captions and it messed up the paper continuity because I wanted all captions horizontal underneath, whereas the photog wanted it to look like the previous spec. My mistake was letting that become a grudge. Lesson learned: if you raised the issue in the edition review, don’t bring it up again in the editor’s meeting. Or ever.

I fell asleep on a long cross-border bus one time in, at the time, a relatively poor country. The pouch with my P&S camera, passport, money was inside my larger bag. I thought it was relatively safe because the bus was quite full so others would see if anyone tried to access my bag. Until I got to the hotel and tried to find my documents and money.

(Some off duty local cops turned up at the hotel the next day, a public holiday, in their gold Mercedes to bring me to the police station. Or they did after trying to take me to another hotel with a couple of young ladies they’d picked up at a karaoke bar en route. They were a bit disappointed when I thanked them but said I wanted to go straight to the station.)

Another apocryphal story is that in service centers, they would ask the user to unplug the device, turn the plug and insert it the other way. This would be a very polite way to ensure that the whole thing is actually plugged in.

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@Ofnuts Ok I’ve done this to people in person.

The IT Crowd was a documentary

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I would have happily done it, but it won’t work on the french plugs that often have a ground connector.