Funny Things You've Seen Others Doing With A Camera

stewart_photo · 07-30-2007, 09:11 PM

Since we've had several threads providing an opportunity to laugh at ourselves (the silly things we've done), here is one where we can laugh at the funny things we've seen others doing. Tell us about the the funny or absurd things you've seen others doing, like shooting a distant subject at night with the tiny on-camera flash. Of course, funny situations or incidents are welcomed as well. I'll start it off.

I watched a guy last week trying to take a picture of a very dimly lit subject. Six times in a row, because of the long exposure, he was looking at his camera before the shutter closed. He actually seemed to be trying to figure out what the extra noise was (the shutter closing), and, of course, why his pictures were so bad. The puzzled look on his face was priceless. I couldn't get a picture because he kept looking up, like he was looking around to see if someone was playing a joke on him - a Candid Camera camera.

stewart

Last edited by stewart_photo; 07-30-2007 at 09:14 PM. Reason: spelling mistake

Chako · 07-30-2007, 09:23 PM

In the late 70s, my neighbors and my family went camping together. The neighbor took his camera out to take some pictures. Placed the camera absent mindedly on the roof of his car and forgot it there. His wife asked him to drive her to town for something or other (I was real young then and was invited along, so I went). We get there, and exit the car. She notices something odd. The camera had somehow slid off the roof with nobody in the car noticing, and got caught on the bumper somehow and was dangling by its neck strap scant centimeters above the pavement. No damage to the camera, but plenty to his pride.

stewart_photo · 07-31-2007, 07:08 AM

That's it. Only two people, Chako and myself, have seen anything funny, strange, or unusual while watching others with a camera. I find that a little hard to believe. Heck, I've done enough funny things over the years to fill this thread, and surely someone saw at least some of it. Here is the place to tell others about it.

stewart

GaryML · 07-31-2007, 08:20 AM

Originally posted by stewart_photo

Tell us about the the funny or absurd things you've seen others doing, like shooting a distant subject at night with the tiny on-camera flash.

There is always the pop-up flash at the baseball games. I saw a person with an EOS Rebel do this just a few days ago. Why people think that the little flash with a range of 10 feet will work on a subject 80-100 feet away is beyond me. But we've all seen that many times before.

The other phenomena that I've noticed is the backwards lens hoods. I see this all the time at my son's soccer games (played outdoors during the day in full sun) and also walking around tourist attractions in my city. The soccer moms have their DSLR with the long consumer zoom (Olympus and Canon seem to be popular). They have the lens hood on, but reversed. I guess some one at the store told them to use the lens hood and showed them how to reverse mount it for storage, but never told them to turn it around during use! I must have seen a half-dozen different people do this over the past year. And the odd thing is that the hood interferes with the zoom ring, so you would think they would suspect something is amiss. And you would think they would notice me with my Sigma 100-300 f4 EX DG that has a monster hood (mounted correctly) and get a clue.

Ishpuini · 07-31-2007, 08:21 AM

I once saw a user of a DSLR (I believe it was a Nikon) taking a shot while holding the camera with arms almost stretched in front of him (P&S style). He was desperately trying to look trough the view finder and clearly not happy about not being able to see too much...

For the record, he was not doing this to get a special angle, just pointing strait in front of him in the middle of an open area...

On another occasion I was shooting the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica. This has a constant flow of hot blocks of lava rolling out of the crater. You only really see this as orange dots moving down the slope at night. During the day it's just dust you see. But at night with a long exposure the results can be quite dramatic. I used my FA77/1.8 at f/5.6 and kept it open around 15 seconds. The trees on the foreground of the viewing point remained nice and black and I had a dimly lit mountain covered with orange stripes and an orange glow over the top. Great shots. Other people around me were using flash (DSLR and P&S alike) and got night shots of illuminated trees, but no volcano visible whatsoever. They couldn't understand the difference in results, even after I explained. They assumed my Pentax *istDS made the difference, and walked away in awe of Pentax...

Wim

little laker · 07-31-2007, 10:35 AM

People using their flash while photographing through a window, and wondering why the picture didn't turn out is a common one.
I love to top it off by taking the same picture, and showing them how nicely mine turned out.

It's a little different, but I like watching some peoples faces when I grab out my camera for some night photography.
I've had a few people calling themselves Photographers tell me I can't take pictures after dark.
My respond is usually Please Don't tell my camera that.

Peter Zack · 07-31-2007, 10:40 AM

I had a couple of similar experiences. Once on a photo field trip, we did a fair amount of hiking that day and one of the shooters put all his Canon gear with a boat load of lenses (in 2 camera bags) on the roof of the car. We were the last 2 to leave the parking lot. He drives off with all the gear on the roof. Now this guy spent most of the day lugging about 900 pounds of gear over the trails and bragging how much better his gear was. The temptation to do nothing crossed my mind for a second.

Anyway I followed him for several miles honking the horn and blinking the lights, not a stop sign in sight. Finally we cross a long bridge that has a toll and I jump out and knock on the window. He was so lucky that the gear was heavy and the car had a roof rack to stop it from doing a header on the road.

The second was at some Canada day fireworks. I'm all set up on the tripod with a cable release and shooting longer exposures (1/2 second etc). There were 4 Canon and 2 Nikon shooters firing away in the same area, with the pop up flashes going like crazy. It was pretty clear these people basically used the cameras like P&S cameras and had never spent any time learning how great the cameras they owned really were.

So at the end of the fireworks we all were talking and comparing some shots. needless to say none of them had a decent shot and they were all marveling at how nice a job the Pentax did. I explained the technique but it didn't seem to take. They all went away thinking that Pentax was some magical brand that could do so much more than their cameras. Of course I hyped the brand and all the old lenses we can get. One asked about the 'old' looking lens and thought it must be some Pro version. When I told them that it was a 20 plus year old $60 M SMC 50mm f 1.4 that would work perfectly on this brand new camera model, there were a few looks of shock. I may have made a few converts that day.

Like Ishpuini, I've seen a few 'arms outstretched' shooters this past year. It's funny to see when you know the difference and you can see the frustration on their faces. I've had to go over and explain it to them a couple of times. Just hate to see someone with a $500+ camera who doesn't want to shoot anymore cause the LCD is 'broken'. Amazing how many people don't understand what they bought and don't even open the manual. But it sure is funny to see them doing this.

Last edited by Peter Zack; 07-31-2007 at 10:49 AM.

and · 07-31-2007, 11:05 AM

Not really 100% on topic but a story to share nonetheless.

I come across those shopping channels from time to time when i am zapping my way thru the available channels on the tv, one time i stopped up to look was when they were selling a camera. i cant remember now which brand it was but i think it might have been an a series pentax p&s because now they are touting the w30. anyways the point is that this camera had shake reduction and the part that i watched was about demonstrating that feature.

now these shopping channels, apart from selling the products at over double the price of what u can get them for on the net, are major scammers and will lie and say anything to mislead.

on with the story. so there are 2 guys and one of them is holding the camera and turns off shake reduction to demonstrate what happens if u dont have this feature.

he is going to take a picture of the other guy and he starts moving his hand in a small circle while shaking it. ok, now anyone with a bit of camera knowledge can tell that even with lens sr, sensor sr, digital sr and whatever sr combined, you cant get a sharp shot if you are waving the camera like that.

so of course when the tv cameras zoom in on the lcd as he demonstrates the resulting shot, it is blurred as hell.

now i got very intrigued, how is sr going to be able to get a good shot in that kind of movement?!

he turns on the sr and strats waving the camera again. and to make the whole thing more impressive, he tells his collegue to start moving around too! so now the guy is moving the camera in a circle and the subject is also moving his head in a circle in the oposite direction.

of course, sr doesnt help at all if the subject is moving like that, even if the camera was on a tripod the shot would still be blurred.

but ah! he takes the shot and its sharp! woooow! call in now and order this camera folks!

how did he manage that? well, he didnt just turn on the SR, he also enabled the flash, altho he didnt mention that...

so if u see people doing crazy things with their cameras then maybe they are just trying to do like the ppl on the shopping channel where they bought it from did?

bt*ist · 07-31-2007, 03:05 PM

The thing that always got me smiling was going to places like the Great Wall of China along with other tourists who'd traveled hundreds or thousands of kilometers from all around the world to see this wondrous feat of construction.... and then a considerable number of these intrepid trekkers would chose to mark the momentous occasion by taking out their 1.3megapixel mobile phone camera and taking a couple of shots!

Saw it again in London when people, confronted by the Rosetta Stone, would feel that the best way to record their memory was with a mobile phone.... shooting through glass... with a flash.

I'm not elitist as such... but come on... a mobile phone camera?? (They're 3megapixel in many cases these days so I'm less inclined to laugh...)

vinzer · 07-31-2007, 04:23 PM

Originally posted by bt*ist

The thing that always got me smiling was going to places like the Great Wall of China along with other tourists who'd traveled hundreds or thousands of kilometers from all around the world to see this wondrous feat of construction.... and then a considerable number of these intrepid trekkers would chose to mark the momentous occasion by taking out their 1.3megapixel mobile phone camera and taking a couple of shots!

Saw it again in London when people, confronted by the Rosetta Stone, would feel that the best way to record their memory was with a mobile phone.... shooting through glass... with a flash.

I'm not elitist as such... but come on... a mobile phone camera?? (They're 3megapixel in many cases these days so I'm less inclined to laugh...)

Unless there's a major leap in sensor technology, a camera phone really won't cut it for me. Too much noise, and not much control. I've had a K800i, and it's still no substitute for even a P&S camera. Besides, we all know how cramming more and more pixels over the same small sensor turns out, alongside the plastic lens found on most camera phones (not sure if the Zeiss ones are made of glass).

Anyway, there was this one time when I was watching a kindergarten graduation. I was watching the official photographer, since he looked impressive, having three SLRs slung on him. As well, I wanted to see how he works. The official photographer had one digital and two film bodies. So there he was, firing away. A few minutes into the ceremony, he had problems with his digital body (from my point of view, he seemed to have run out of battery juice).

Here's funny thing number one: he didn't have any spare batteries on him.

Unable to replace the batteries and with a small queue of kids gathering already to have their pictures taken, he slung back his digital SLR and moved to one of his two film SLRs.

He looked to have recovered somewhat, and so he started shooting again. He had problems again (this time, I can't tell, since I'm not too familiar with newer film SLRs - I only know of fully manual, mechanical ones), switched to the other SLR, only to give up immediately. The other one looked to be the aforementioned fully manual SLR. I was curious about that, since the 2nd film body looked to be in perfect working order, and at least THAT body would give him the least problems, owing to it's much simpler mechanics.

Funny thing number two: he doesn't seem to know how to guesstimate proper exposure. I can't remember now what body he had, but it might have been the case that the meter is broken, or he doesn't know how to use it at all (probably only used his DSLR in full point-and-shoot mode).

Which leads me to funny thing number three: he whipped out an instamatic film camera.

He stopped at some point again, and started fiddling through his pockets. I didn't think he found anything. Anyway, he put back the instamatic in his pocket and went back to the manual SLR.

He just kept shooting and shooting. It seemed like he never ran out of film.

Funny thing number four: he must have ran out of film, and didn't bring extra rolls.

Which then resulted in funny thing number five: after the event, he talked to some of the people in the crowd who had video cameras (still cameras were prohibited from being used inside, owing to the presence of the "official" photographer), myself included, and asked for copies so he could make stills out of them. Good luck in trying to make even a decent 4x6 print from SD resolution video stills!

The sad part is, those parents of the kids relied on him (and paid him) to take nice photos of their kids (glad I'm only a spectator there - my cousin was part of that batch). That graduation won't happen again, and now the parents and school officials were left with crummy point-and-shoot photos (worse, horrible blown-up video still prints) that they could've done themselves after all (for only the marginal cost of film and/or batteries).

That photographer I saw should be very ashamed for not being professional about things. He had at least two functional SLR cameras, only that he didn't prepare the other things he needed (batteries, film, and knowledge of basic exposure settings).

mph · 07-31-2007, 05:12 PM

People asking about a camera lens/binoculars/telescope: "How far away can it see?"

I point out that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, and that's pretty easy to see with just your eyes, but sometimes they still don't realize the question makes no sense.

Arpe · 07-31-2007, 05:16 PM

We had a couple of Japanese students stay with us. One clear night I took them outside and pointed out the Southern Cross to them - they were VERY excited, not only to see the Cross, but also to see so many other stars, it's not like that in Tokyo apparently! So one of them rushes inside and grabs her compact digital and takes a couple of photos of the Southern Cross, with the flash on of course, after all, it was dark! I laughed at them, so they thought it was funny too. When they had calmed down (it took a while) and gone back inside I got my Sigma 70-200, stuck on the 2x, and took some photos using the tripod, I'd never done it before. I gave them the photos and they were grateful.

vievetrick · 07-31-2007, 06:34 PM

these are some great stories. I see the cell phone thing all the time everywhere. It is pretty funny and have to admit I too have snapped one or two with my Treo650. Usually after a few drinks and of other people that have done the same (drank a bit). I get a giggle the next day. I am trying to think of a good story but drawing a blank. I will think about it more and return.

**Mallee Boy** · 07-31-2007, 06:48 PM

Oh boy.....where to start.
I have a wry smile every time I see a shooter armed with his monster lens, hand held, aiming at something, zooming in, taking the shot, peering hopefully at the back of the camera....and then the little frown appears.

as the less than sharp shot appears. Darn thing....that camera salesman said...

I was taking a shot using my mono-pod, when another photog with far more expensive equipment asked to look at my results.....he would not accept that the mono-pod would make that much difference being oh so quick to blame his equipment.....I found myself defending C****......please forgive me.

....thus the wry smile.

Cheers
Grant

Ed in GA · 07-31-2007, 07:05 PM

I'm going to have to be "self-deprecating" with this one.

Looking at the back of my K1000 after taking a shot. Only to realize that there's nothing there.

07-30-2007, 09:11 PM	#1
stewart_photo Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Heidelberg, Germany Posts: 1,864	Funny Things You've Seen Others Doing With A Camera Since we've had several threads providing an opportunity to laugh at ourselves (the silly things we've done), here is one where we can laugh at the funny things we've seen others doing. Tell us about the the funny or absurd things you've seen others doing, like shooting a distant subject at night with the tiny on-camera flash. Of course, funny situations or incidents are welcomed as well. I'll start it off. I watched a guy last week trying to take a picture of a very dimly lit subject. Six times in a row, because of the long exposure, he was looking at his camera before the shutter closed. He actually seemed to be trying to figure out what the extra noise was (the shutter closing), and, of course, why his pictures were so bad. The puzzled look on his face was priceless. I couldn't get a picture because he kept looking up, like he was looking around to see if someone was playing a joke on him - a Candid Camera camera. stewart Last edited by stewart_photo; 07-30-2007 at 09:14 PM. Reason: spelling mistake

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07-30-2007, 09:23 PM	#2
Chako Inactive Account Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Sault Ste Marie, Ont, Canada. Posts: 563	In the late 70s, my neighbors and my family went camping together. The neighbor took his camera out to take some pictures. Placed the camera absent mindedly on the roof of his car and forgot it there. His wife asked him to drive her to town for something or other (I was real young then and was invited along, so I went). We get there, and exit the car. She notices something odd. The camera had somehow slid off the roof with nobody in the car noticing, and got caught on the bumper somehow and was dangling by its neck strap scant centimeters above the pavement. No damage to the camera, but plenty to his pride.

07-31-2007, 07:08 AM	#3
stewart_photo Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Heidelberg, Germany Posts: 1,864 Original Poster	That's it. Only two people, Chako and myself, have seen anything funny, strange, or unusual while watching others with a camera. I find that a little hard to believe. Heck, I've done enough funny things over the years to fill this thread, and surely someone saw at least some of it. Here is the place to tell others about it. stewart

07-31-2007, 08:20 AM	#4
GaryML Inactive Account Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: San Diego, California Posts: 441	Originally posted by stewart_photo Tell us about the the funny or absurd things you've seen others doing, like shooting a distant subject at night with the tiny on-camera flash. There is always the pop-up flash at the baseball games. I saw a person with an EOS Rebel do this just a few days ago. Why people think that the little flash with a range of 10 feet will work on a subject 80-100 feet away is beyond me. But we've all seen that many times before. The other phenomena that I've noticed is the backwards lens hoods. I see this all the time at my son's soccer games (played outdoors during the day in full sun) and also walking around tourist attractions in my city. The soccer moms have their DSLR with the long consumer zoom (Olympus and Canon seem to be popular). They have the lens hood on, but reversed. I guess some one at the store told them to use the lens hood and showed them how to reverse mount it for storage, but never told them to turn it around during use! I must have seen a half-dozen different people do this over the past year. And the odd thing is that the hood interferes with the zoom ring, so you would think they would suspect something is amiss. And you would think they would notice me with my Sigma 100-300 f4 EX DG that has a monster hood (mounted correctly) and get a clue.

07-31-2007, 08:21 AM	#5
Ishpuini Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Antwerp, Belgium Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,727	I once saw a user of a DSLR (I believe it was a Nikon) taking a shot while holding the camera with arms almost stretched in front of him (P&S style). He was desperately trying to look trough the view finder and clearly not happy about not being able to see too much... For the record, he was not doing this to get a special angle, just pointing strait in front of him in the middle of an open area... On another occasion I was shooting the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica. This has a constant flow of hot blocks of lava rolling out of the crater. You only really see this as orange dots moving down the slope at night. During the day it's just dust you see. But at night with a long exposure the results can be quite dramatic. I used my FA77/1.8 at f/5.6 and kept it open around 15 seconds. The trees on the foreground of the viewing point remained nice and black and I had a dimly lit mountain covered with orange stripes and an orange glow over the top. Great shots. Other people around me were using flash (DSLR and P&S alike) and got night shots of illuminated trees, but no volcano visible whatsoever. They couldn't understand the difference in results, even after I explained. They assumed my Pentax *istDS made the difference, and walked away in awe of Pentax... Wim

07-31-2007, 10:35 AM	#6
little laker Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,697	People using their flash while photographing through a window, and wondering why the picture didn't turn out is a common one. I love to top it off by taking the same picture, and showing them how nicely mine turned out. It's a little different, but I like watching some peoples faces when I grab out my camera for some night photography. I've had a few people calling themselves Photographers tell me I can't take pictures after dark. My respond is usually Please Don't tell my camera that.

07-31-2007, 10:40 AM	#7
Peter Zack Pentaxian Moderator Emeritus Join Date: May 2007 Location: Edmonton Alberta, Canada Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 10,643	I had a couple of similar experiences. Once on a photo field trip, we did a fair amount of hiking that day and one of the shooters put all his Canon gear with a boat load of lenses (in 2 camera bags) on the roof of the car. We were the last 2 to leave the parking lot. He drives off with all the gear on the roof. Now this guy spent most of the day lugging about 900 pounds of gear over the trails and bragging how much better his gear was. The temptation to do nothing crossed my mind for a second. Anyway I followed him for several miles honking the horn and blinking the lights, not a stop sign in sight. Finally we cross a long bridge that has a toll and I jump out and knock on the window. He was so lucky that the gear was heavy and the car had a roof rack to stop it from doing a header on the road. The second was at some Canada day fireworks. I'm all set up on the tripod with a cable release and shooting longer exposures (1/2 second etc). There were 4 Canon and 2 Nikon shooters firing away in the same area, with the pop up flashes going like crazy. It was pretty clear these people basically used the cameras like P&S cameras and had never spent any time learning how great the cameras they owned really were. So at the end of the fireworks we all were talking and comparing some shots. needless to say none of them had a decent shot and they were all marveling at how nice a job the Pentax did. I explained the technique but it didn't seem to take. They all went away thinking that Pentax was some magical brand that could do so much more than their cameras. Of course I hyped the brand and all the old lenses we can get. One asked about the 'old' looking lens and thought it must be some Pro version. When I told them that it was a 20 plus year old $60 M SMC 50mm f 1.4 that would work perfectly on this brand new camera model, there were a few looks of shock. I may have made a few converts that day. Like Ishpuini, I've seen a few 'arms outstretched' shooters this past year. It's funny to see when you know the difference and you can see the frustration on their faces. I've had to go over and explain it to them a couple of times. Just hate to see someone with a $500+ camera who doesn't want to shoot anymore cause the LCD is 'broken'. Amazing how many people don't understand what they bought and don't even open the manual. But it sure is funny to see them doing this. Last edited by Peter Zack; 07-31-2007 at 10:49 AM.

07-31-2007, 11:05 AM	#8
and Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,476	Not really 100% on topic but a story to share nonetheless. I come across those shopping channels from time to time when i am zapping my way thru the available channels on the tv, one time i stopped up to look was when they were selling a camera. i cant remember now which brand it was but i think it might have been an a series pentax p&s because now they are touting the w30. anyways the point is that this camera had shake reduction and the part that i watched was about demonstrating that feature. now these shopping channels, apart from selling the products at over double the price of what u can get them for on the net, are major scammers and will lie and say anything to mislead. on with the story. so there are 2 guys and one of them is holding the camera and turns off shake reduction to demonstrate what happens if u dont have this feature. he is going to take a picture of the other guy and he starts moving his hand in a small circle while shaking it. ok, now anyone with a bit of camera knowledge can tell that even with lens sr, sensor sr, digital sr and whatever sr combined, you cant get a sharp shot if you are waving the camera like that. so of course when the tv cameras zoom in on the lcd as he demonstrates the resulting shot, it is blurred as hell. now i got very intrigued, how is sr going to be able to get a good shot in that kind of movement?! he turns on the sr and strats waving the camera again. and to make the whole thing more impressive, he tells his collegue to start moving around too! so now the guy is moving the camera in a circle and the subject is also moving his head in a circle in the oposite direction. of course, sr doesnt help at all if the subject is moving like that, even if the camera was on a tripod the shot would still be blurred. but ah! he takes the shot and its sharp! woooow! call in now and order this camera folks! how did he manage that? well, he didnt just turn on the SR, he also enabled the flash, altho he didnt mention that... so if u see people doing crazy things with their cameras then maybe they are just trying to do like the ppl on the shopping channel where they bought it from did?

07-31-2007, 03:05 PM	#9
bt*ist Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: London, UK Photos: Gallery Posts: 211	The thing that always got me smiling was going to places like the Great Wall of China along with other tourists who'd traveled hundreds or thousands of kilometers from all around the world to see this wondrous feat of construction.... and then a considerable number of these intrepid trekkers would chose to mark the momentous occasion by taking out their 1.3megapixel mobile phone camera and taking a couple of shots! Saw it again in London when people, confronted by the Rosetta Stone, would feel that the best way to record their memory was with a mobile phone.... shooting through glass... with a flash. I'm not elitist as such... but come on... a mobile phone camera?? (They're 3megapixel in many cases these days so I'm less inclined to laugh...)

07-31-2007, 04:23 PM	#10
vinzer Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Philippines Posts: 1,399	Originally posted by bt*ist The thing that always got me smiling was going to places like the Great Wall of China along with other tourists who'd traveled hundreds or thousands of kilometers from all around the world to see this wondrous feat of construction.... and then a considerable number of these intrepid trekkers would chose to mark the momentous occasion by taking out their 1.3megapixel mobile phone camera and taking a couple of shots! Saw it again in London when people, confronted by the Rosetta Stone, would feel that the best way to record their memory was with a mobile phone.... shooting through glass... with a flash. I'm not elitist as such... but come on... a mobile phone camera?? (They're 3megapixel in many cases these days so I'm less inclined to laugh...) Unless there's a major leap in sensor technology, a camera phone really won't cut it for me. Too much noise, and not much control. I've had a K800i, and it's still no substitute for even a P&S camera. Besides, we all know how cramming more and more pixels over the same small sensor turns out, alongside the plastic lens found on most camera phones (not sure if the Zeiss ones are made of glass). Anyway, there was this one time when I was watching a kindergarten graduation. I was watching the official photographer, since he looked impressive, having three SLRs slung on him. As well, I wanted to see how he works. The official photographer had one digital and two film bodies. So there he was, firing away. A few minutes into the ceremony, he had problems with his digital body (from my point of view, he seemed to have run out of battery juice). Here's funny thing number one: he didn't have any spare batteries on him. Unable to replace the batteries and with a small queue of kids gathering already to have their pictures taken, he slung back his digital SLR and moved to one of his two film SLRs. He looked to have recovered somewhat, and so he started shooting again. He had problems again (this time, I can't tell, since I'm not too familiar with newer film SLRs - I only know of fully manual, mechanical ones), switched to the other SLR, only to give up immediately. The other one looked to be the aforementioned fully manual SLR. I was curious about that, since the 2nd film body looked to be in perfect working order, and at least THAT body would give him the least problems, owing to it's much simpler mechanics. Funny thing number two: he doesn't seem to know how to guesstimate proper exposure. I can't remember now what body he had, but it might have been the case that the meter is broken, or he doesn't know how to use it at all (probably only used his DSLR in full point-and-shoot mode). Which leads me to funny thing number three: he whipped out an instamatic film camera. He stopped at some point again, and started fiddling through his pockets. I didn't think he found anything. Anyway, he put back the instamatic in his pocket and went back to the manual SLR. He just kept shooting and shooting. It seemed like he never ran out of film. Funny thing number four: he must have ran out of film, and didn't bring extra rolls. Which then resulted in funny thing number five: after the event, he talked to some of the people in the crowd who had video cameras (still cameras were prohibited from being used inside, owing to the presence of the "official" photographer), myself included, and asked for copies so he could make stills out of them. Good luck in trying to make even a decent 4x6 print from SD resolution video stills! The sad part is, those parents of the kids relied on him (and paid him) to take nice photos of their kids (glad I'm only a spectator there - my cousin was part of that batch). That graduation won't happen again, and now the parents and school officials were left with crummy point-and-shoot photos (worse, horrible blown-up video still prints) that they could've done themselves after all (for only the marginal cost of film and/or batteries). That photographer I saw should be very ashamed for not being professional about things. He had at least two functional SLR cameras, only that he didn't prepare the other things he needed (batteries, film, and knowledge of basic exposure settings).

07-31-2007, 05:12 PM	#11
mph Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Johnstown, PA, USA Posts: 44	People asking about a camera lens/binoculars/telescope: "How far away can it see?" I point out that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, and that's pretty easy to see with just your eyes, but sometimes they still don't realize the question makes no sense.

07-31-2007, 05:16 PM	#12
Arpe Pentaxian Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: New Zealand Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 4,452	We had a couple of Japanese students stay with us. One clear night I took them outside and pointed out the Southern Cross to them - they were VERY excited, not only to see the Cross, but also to see so many other stars, it's not like that in Tokyo apparently! So one of them rushes inside and grabs her compact digital and takes a couple of photos of the Southern Cross, with the flash on of course, after all, it was dark! I laughed at them, so they thought it was funny too. When they had calmed down (it took a while) and gone back inside I got my Sigma 70-200, stuck on the 2x, and took some photos using the tripod, I'd never done it before. I gave them the photos and they were grateful.

07-31-2007, 06:34 PM	#13
vievetrick Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Easthampton - Massachusetts - USA Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,183	these are some great stories. I see the cell phone thing all the time everywhere. It is pretty funny and have to admit I too have snapped one or two with my Treo650. Usually after a few drinks and of other people that have done the same (drank a bit). I get a giggle the next day. I am trying to think of a good story but drawing a blank. I will think about it more and return.

07-31-2007, 06:48 PM	#14
Mallee Boy Site Supporter Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: South Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 3,904	Oh boy.....where to start. I have a wry smile every time I see a shooter armed with his monster lens, hand held, aiming at something, zooming in, taking the shot, peering hopefully at the back of the camera....and then the little frown appears. as the less than sharp shot appears. Darn thing....that camera salesman said... I was taking a shot using my mono-pod, when another photog with far more expensive equipment asked to look at my results.....he would not accept that the mono-pod would make that much difference being oh so quick to blame his equipment.....I found myself defending C****......please forgive me. ....thus the wry smile. Cheers Grant

07-31-2007, 07:05 PM	#15
Ed in GA Guest	I'm going to have to be "self-deprecating" with this one. Looking at the back of my K1000 after taking a shot. Only to realize that there's nothing there.