"Sods law"

What does it for you???

For me a goood example is whenever I arrive at a location to Photograph
my main interest "Aircraft".
The most interesting ones prove to be the one which arrives as I do ,before I have set up to start.
Then the one which Arrives after I have packed up ready to leave.
I have lost count the times this has happened.

This was posted on another PPRuNe thread recently.....along similar lines.

YouTube - Was this the unluckiest video of the Steam Loco Tornado passing through a Welwyn Hatfield station? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n856mSobBrs)

Even better when you listen to the camera person going "Nooooo..."
:}

My father was a wedding photographer, had a favourite church, Picturesque Lych Gate, Flagstone Path, Well Trimmed Yew Trees etc.

Happy Couple framed in gate, shutter primed - Council truck draws up behind and starts pumping out the sewer.

But ....... I was given a photo of "my" 747 taking off from Sydney, local photographer heard that the airlines' new paint scheme had just landed, so set off, reached his favourite vantage point, just had the camera screwed on to the tripod when he heard the engines spooling up for take off and barely had time to compose and focus .... but he got a fantastic shot of the aircraft rotating, nosewheel airborne, front main wheels just lifting and rear wheels still grounded,with lots of 'power' pouring out of the rear of the engines - Magic ! Sometimes you catch Murphy asleep and get lucky.

Choosing the supermarket checkout with the shortest queue, then being held up for ages due to a query on the person in fronts purchases or credit card.

The story of my life over the last 17 years!!:mad::mad:

However, I'm still breathing, in the vertical position, and still holding my licence so there's still hope!:ok::ok:

Don't even consider wildlife photography, OPF !

I think I get your drift.
I do take the occasional Wildlife pic. very much on Spec. inbetween taking my main subject "Aircraft."
Its only a hobby for me , being self taught.
I can only imagine the frustrations with concentrating on Wildlife, if thats your main "Subject"
For the record I have posted a few Bird Pics, couple of days ago, on another thread in this Forum.
See "Crosswind Limits For Birds" , this forum "Jet Blast".
OPF

Years ago, in the dark ages of analog photography, I served on a ship that had the misfortune of running aground. High and dry in a floating dock in Norway I decided to snap some pictures of her tormented underbelly. This being end of December in Norway it was off course cold and dark so I rigged a huge number of large work lamps to provide the ultimate setting. The temperature was down to minus 20 C so after clicking of 20 pictures plus I wrestled my fingers off the tripod and called it a night.
New Years Eve, pulled out the camera and realized I had no film in it.
Per

Been there/Done that/Even Designed the "Teeshirt"!!!!!
OPF

Back in the 1960s, when colour film was rare, expensive and tricky to use, I was given the job of taking some 'brochure' pix for Butlins at Skegness (in between learning to fly at Ingoldmells). One of the topics was an 'Old Tyme Ballroom' scene and, in front of a packed crowd of onlookers I had set up my Rolleiflex at one end with a couple of 'slave flashes' (flashbulb types with a small photoelectric cell in each pointing at my kingsize flashbulb above the camera).

In the centre of the floor were ten sequin-bedecked couples poised and ready, behind the OT dancing instructors in their professional pre-Srictly-Come-Dancing finery, about to launch -on my signal - into the Valeta.

I duly gave a thumbs up to the orchestra and waited for the eight-bar intro. (I had done my homework with the instructors earler and a small runthrough).

The music started, and shutter-finger poised for the impressive 'first step' moment, I was ready. Off they went and a good half second before my shutter clicked, both of the slave flashes fired - having been triggered by some wazzock with a cheap Agiflash camera just behind me in the crowd!

I watched as the long dance progressed to the 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' of the crowd and then had to embarrassingly do a sheep-dog impression and herd up the dancers and explain that I'd dropped the proverbial and they'd have to do it all again. A prime, grovelling sod's law moment

So, I reset some more slaves, went through the whole thing again and this time threatened all and sundry with all manner of things nasty if they so much as even thought of having another flash - it was my show after all!

Often wonder how impressed the punter who'd bolloxed my original shot was when she got her black and white pix back from the chemist.

(My second version kept popping up in Butlins publications until the mid-90s though, so no harm done).

The train video is hilarious. Life presents plenty of examples of 'sods law'. But two of my aviation related ones are: Flew a Cessna 172 to Memphis airport FBO on my way to catch a flight home. Despite having my camera on hand there's not much to see on the ramp, just the usual FBO stuff. As my flight takes off I glance out the window at the FBO, and there sitting casually on the ramp of the FBO, there's a USAF T37, two Huey Cobra gunships AND a MIG 15!:ugh: I must have missed seeing them by minutes.

My second, flying to the Isle of Man, from Dublin via Belfast in a 172. A lot of overwater flying in a single. I left my camera at home. As we taxied out for departure from Ronaldsway. The Red Arrows arrived overhead, it was TT week. We were asked to hold while they landed. All nine of them taxied directly past us with many of the pilots giving us a friendly wave as I thought wistfully of my camera sitting in my bedroom across the Irish sea.:{

At least I did get to taxi behind them for a bit giving me a tiny little sense of what it would be like to be one.

My 'photo horribilus' was on a day out (forget where) some years ago.

Loaded new film on arrival and spent the day soaking up the scenery. Later discovered the film tongue had slipped out of the spool and I'd spent the day winding on nothing!

Another aviation and photography tale, not really involving me as I was away but it could be construed as my fault.

When the space shuttle was new it came to Europe on the back of a 747, doing the airshow rounds. As I was away my dear old Dad said he would take some pictures as the combination overflew BHX. 'I know just where to stand' sez him.

He did - right under the flightpath - good picture of the underneath of a 747 though...

VnV

All sounds troublingly familiar. Back in the day, a younger/thinner Crepello was the proud owner of a fully manual Zenith SLR, which had all the delicacy of a battleship but was similarly built, and was great for learning how photography really works.

Sadly, an early lesson was that cheap filmstock was no match for the mighty Zenith sprockets, which were great at ripping through the perforations if one's wind-on action was too brutal. Learned, the hard way, always to check the rewind handle rotates when you wind on the film.

CompactFlash cards take all the fun out of it.... ;)

Crepello,

a familiar tale of Zeniths!

I think the problem was that most 35mm sprockets were plastic and fairly kind to film whereas the Zenith used crudely-cut tool steel. I certainly remember nipping into our darkroom to separate mangled film from it's clutches on several occasions. It could raise blood on the unwary too!


VnV

SODS LAW. Wheres Murphy when you need him?

I prefer Cole's law, myself.

Bought a Zenith E in 1973,gave many years of good service, never had any prob with the film transport but sadly the shutter speed nob thingy ceased to have any influence whatsoever over what the shutter actually did.
Still in a draw about the place somewhere.
:(

Back in another life as a survey photographer after a a long four hour flight to the survey area in the DC3 sitting back at 23000 ft. I started the camera in manual as I spotted the first target. An odd grinding sound came from the camera as the glass plate, incorrectly mounted in it's aluminium carrier shattered into a zillion pieces and spread it's glass dust throughout the camera and over the remaining 79 plates in the magazines, and sucked into every nook and crany in the Wild Heerbrugg RC 8.
The return to base was a very quiet flight with me sent to sit in the dark room for a couple of hours to reflect on my navel, wasn't my fault either, I hadn't been the one to load the plates into their holders, I just happened to be the flight grub. Had a good sleep though.

Hat off and deep respect for Crankhandle - someone with actual experience of glass plate aerial photography! (I had plenty of commercial experience with plates on terra firma but sadly none airborne).

Think you actually meant the Wild Heerbrugg RC 7. The -8 was the daft cassette version circa the late '60s. Only ever saw the RC 7 in Wild's 'museum'.

Brought back my own memories of trundling up and down long flight lines in DC 3s at 25 000' for Fairey Surveys over Malawi, Zambia and Bechuanaland/Botswana (during it's transition) using a venerable 15cm
RC 5. (That was the one you had to lift out the whole camera body to change filters. Try that at 25k with the old 'hosepipe' RAF oxygen system to go from b/w to colour film)!

Those were't days!

Went out into the Ardennes yesterday with my newish EOS 400 ... battery empty and forgot the spare.:ugh:

Back in 1988 a school friend's mother worked for one of the big TV stations here.

They got some beautiful footage of the Tall Ships (fully working replicas of the First Fleet) sailing gallantly up the river, sails billowing against a blue sky... fortunately a junior editor noticed the large, bloated and very dead cat lapping against the bow of the lead ship just before they broadcast the recording on the nightly news :sad:.

They had to make do with some more 'long range' footage.

just shows you how much damage all that piped oxygen an do to your memory, you are right of course, it was the RC7, I did also use the RC5, 8, 9 and 10 and F24 at various times. A great life when you're young but I think it had a few lasting effects. The RC7 was probably the best camera I used, beautiful results although it was a heavy SOB. Thanks for the memory ccorrection.:O

Around 1950 my sister got married and Mother decided it was such an important occasion she would invest in a new camera. To avoid the chance of any errors she asked the chap at the camera shop to put the film in and set it up for her, he did. After the wedding she returned to the shop to get the film developed and a very upset camera expert had to tell her he hadn't wound the film on properly. Mum was upset.....

Photographed a memorial service for a friend's father last year, and came back with some excellent shots...

...which completely evaporated off the XD card when I forgot to discharge static collected from walking across the carpet BEFORE plugging the little dude into my computer!

I took the card to my local photo emporium with the hope they could read something off, but the thing was toasted inside.

The event destroyed the card reader as well.


Going back many years, when I was in high school and college, static damage plagued the impatient who would unspool film too quickly while loading it into tanks for development - but this only wrecked 1 or 2 frames and the results were often pretty stunning, especially with KodaChrome 25 or other good, slow, slide film.