Just dragged myself out to take a shot of an isolated cottage I spotted the other day.
I figured the sun would set nicely behind it and make a great picture. Nice undulating field leading invitingly up to it.
Was amazed to find a parking space really close. Thought it would be a hike.
Set the camera up with my 55-250mm on tripod. No Card in Camera!! Remember leaving it on desk. FAIL!
Oh noooo… I grimaced reading this… Not just because of your error, but because memories came flooding back - I only properly got into Photography back in 2021.
Had a specific shot in mind just down the road… a train flying past at Sunset.
Got out there… Got the camera setup on the Tripod, turned around… Damnit… The lens I wanted to use was back at home sitting on the kitchen counter… No problem, I’ve got another lens, its not the end of the world… Turn the camera on… Nope… Battery is dead.
Thankfully I was 10mins from home, so I hadn’t gone miles out the way for a wasted trip
Like you I’ve also left SD Cards at home
Now though I make sure everything is charged the night before, with spare SD Cards in my wallet just in case I’ve been an idiot - I also deliberately leave my Camera bag open before leaving the house, so I have to glance in there, and make sure I’ve got everything
You can leave a cheap card in your camera bag, even thought it won’t be fast, at least you’ll be able to capture some photos
It’s weird modern cameras don’t have even tiny amount of internal memory, like 2GB or something small like that, just for cases like this…
Done that, I also went to a Sony event the other week and spent so much faffing around to get my spare camera set up for my partner to tag along I forgot to pop a battery in mine…
Other than cost, I wonder why manufacturers don’t add in some onboard memory. Fairly cheap these days and it would be a great selling point.
Something small, like 512mb would be more than enough.
I was going on a dive one weekend earlier this year out of San Diego and my buddy and I start descending. I started turning on my strobes, taking off my dome port cover, positioning the arms and readying the camera for the dive.
As we got to the bottom, an adult sea lion comes whizzing toward us and starts swimming spirals around us. I’m scrambling to finally turn my camera on when it sits perfectly on the sand, back arched and head forward, picture perfect like a performing sea lion at Sea World. It is easily within arm’s reach, it’s in the perfect spot.
I raise my camera up and…black screen. “No way!” I thought. “I know the battery is charged, and the leak detector says the housing isn’t flooded.” And then it hits me. I turn the camera around and through the dome port I see:
“OLYMPUS”
It happens to the best of us dude!
Recently upgraded to the Z8 and have been doing all my transfers via USB-C. Never taking the card out of the body means I never forget to bring it! It’s a subtle bonus I didn’t really consider
Went on a weekend getaway last month. 4 day stay in a ocean view hotel 50 miles away from any actual grocery store. Went to take my first shot and boom!.. no card in camera. Made a post on Facebook in a local-ish camera group and found a man willing to sell me one of his SD cards. That was a stressful situation at first.
HA, I did this last week except I think I have you beat- I probably took about 50 or so pics and got home to review them before I realized it.
My wife commented that this wont be the last time that happened. I responded with “nah, I make other mistakes, but I like to think I learn to not make the same one over and over”. Sure enough, a few days brought the camera somewhere(remembered the card) and didnt realize till we got there that I had 17% battery remaining. I suppose my saving grace both times was that the camera was just along for the ride. We went to both destinations for other reasons, so travelled light.
My common mistakes in the year I’ve been shooting seriously-
No card
No battery/low battery
Hand in shot with smaller lenses
Leaving Exposure Composition on a value from the last photo session
I leave the card slot on my camera open whenever the card is not in it. That way I can’t ever pick it up without knowing that it has no card.
I’ve calculated the likelyhood of me smashing my slot door off is higher than forgetting the memory card, now that I always keep a spare 16Gb card in the camera bag.
That is what I do, and it has saved me countless times.
lol. That sucks. I’ve been shooting for years, and last year got invited out to a hockey game, drove about an hour to get there, even agreed with teams photographer to get some time on the hole in the glass. Just getting ready to start, and realized I had accidentally taken off the lens adapter on my R6…no photos for me, but the media room food was decent 😀
Why to go Flounder, you ****** up.
Yep. Done that a couple of times. Now I have a camera with 2 card slots with big ass cards in and only take one out at a time.
Nooo! That’s the worst feeling! Had that happen enough that I started stashing extra cards around - at least one in my camera bag and one in my glove box 😁
Been there. Part of the process of learning.