Come on. Post up your "oh no!!!!" moments whilst using your cameras. You know, those embarrassing and funny moments. I'll start with a few of mine.

Last year I was filming at the Geneva motor show. The day before I had purchased a canon xf300 to replace my xha1. Only chance I got read the manual was on the 2 hour flight there. Got all set for the first interview on the Lotus stand and found that I couldn't hear anything, even though I had checked the sound levels earlier.

I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out the problem whilst the presenter and interviewee were waiti g. Changing channels, checking mics, cables etc. I could see the levels moving on the screen but couldnt hear anything.
Turned out that the headphone volume buttons were located in a different place than the xha1. They were under the handle and whilst handling the camera had accidentally muted the headphones!!! Oh no!!!

Then there was the time we were interviewing a well known racing driver and 5 minutes in I realised the camera wasn't recording. We had to start again and I blamed it on a technical error and said some techie words to make it sound true. Oh no!!!!!

Another time we interviewed Pink Floydd drummer Nick Mason and the interviewer managed to piss him off in the first few seconds. The interviewer didn't know who Nick Mason was and I mistakenly told him he was a ex- pink floydd when in fact he was still in pink floydd. So he introduced him as the ex-member. Nick didn't take it to well and the interview just went downhill from there.

Who's next?

Sure - oh no moments to happen...

I did a longer interview with my Canon 7D in the heat of Ghana once. I was filming a happening outside in the sun for some time and was then told that I now could do the interview I was hoping to get. The camera was warning me about the heat issue.. But I felt I need to keep going to get the interview. So I start. First clip - 10 minutes - go fine. The second 10 minutes seem good as well. I finish the interview and the interviewee leaves his chair.

But I still have the image of that person in the frame of the 7D. Weird. I thought. I tried to stop recording - no response from the camera. I try to switch it off. no response. I had to take out the battery to make it react… Back with the batteri installed I notice that the card has way too much storage available… damn it - it didn´t save the second part of the interview…

I blame it on a way too warm camera… I do have the sound (since that was recorded on an external Zoom) but the image is gone…

damn… Now i did manage to get what I needed at another instance but it has decreased my trust in the camera in heat - at least with that kingston memory card in it… I do trust sandisk more now.. but that may well be a coincidence….

/EL

Ah yes,

Filmed an interview once. I noticed there was no sound from the boom mic (was using earphones). When to check all the connections and even swapped to another mic. 10minutes later i realised the mic wasn't turned on. simple as that. made the interviewee wait for 10minutes while my crew and i tried to solve a non-existent problem. was pretty embarrassing.

I notice that alot of us have the same problem, sound. lol
Le sound du devil.

btw, congrats syeed, on your new xf300. its one of the cameras i dream of using. the other being the Sony F3

Nice one guys. Keep them coming

Thanks Donald, but I've actually had the XF300 for nearly 1 year now. Great camera, but I'm looking forward to the C300 in the next few weeks.

Once I made a very beautiful shot with a whole storm of birds flying away then realized I didn't press the rec button...
Once I also shot an entire sequence without realizing that my sony Z1 had +18db on. Of course I was outdoor in a sunny day.

Regarding damage to cameras....

About 6 years ago I attached a video camera using a large suction mount to the side of my car. It was a cold day and I didn't warm the rubber on the suction mount. At around 50mph it fell off and bounced around on concrete. Still worked though....sort of.

Another time I got an external v-lock battery for my XF300 which was only a couple of months old. The guy that sold me the camera told me the battery would work. Plugged it in. Nothing. Camera wouldn't power up even with the standard Canon batteries. Turned out it had fried some of the internal components!!!! Fortunatly Canon UK fixed it under warranty.

That happens to me a lot!!!

I hate when you realize you're shooting the wrong frame rate. It's okay if it's b-roll because lots of times you can just conform it and slow it down (if your edit is 24 fps)... however, it really sucks when it's an interview and one cam is 24 and the second is 30.

Oh no...

Filmed a short video today where the subject spoke to camera whilst reading from the teleprompter. He wasn't used to being filmed, so he was a little nervous. We finally got a few great takes, so I played them back to make sure everything was 100%. Turns out - for a reason I still haven't discovered - the mic didn't record the sound. Had to go grab a back up mic and redo two scripts. It wasn't horrible, but it's still another sound-related 'oh no!' moment.

My biggest 'oh no!' moment was when I was filming a series of interviews in Miami with a Panasonic DVX100b. One of the interviewees was really, really tall. I'm talking 6'5" or more. I was extending the legs on my tripod to match his height when I realized the camera wasn't screwed on all the way. I knew this because I saw the thing on the floor with a smashed LCD.

It sits in my closet to this day. It's been replaced by a GH2, though, so not all is lost.

I was doing the sound desk for an external event for the Scottish Parliament a few months back. All was going well various people using the main mic, backup at the ready... The First Minister walks up, takes the mic out of the stand and starts talking. Silence. He looks at it funny, picks up the second mic with a great rumbling and fumbling through the PA. Silence.

The mics were mounted in XLR cabled stands so when he picked them up he was unplugging them.
The Oh No moment in all of this was me having to take the stage and plug them back in. When I plugged the first one back in (with a pop) he said, "Oh. Right. I'm an idiot." which went well in the room and on the televised broadcast...
Exit Stage Left...

It's on Youtube somewhere!

----

The other Oh No was shooting a wedding a few years ago. 5D backup slipped off my shoulder when shooting the reception exit shots. It went down 8-9 concrete steps and crashed to a stop on the path below. The bride and groom look shocked and stopped in their tracks. I said "It's OK, I just gave it to the second shooter..." They picked it up as if all was normal and started shooting. Thankfully all was fine except a few new dings.

Tip: when using old, overused news room tripods, don't assume that just because you hear a "click" that your multi-deca-thousand-dollar ENG camera is actually securely latched to the tripod, or that the head friction will hold the head level whilst you nonchalantly step away to adjust your interviewee's microphone. Such assumptions may result in the head slowly tilting until it dumps the actually unlatched camera from eye height onto a bed of hard river stone, which may snap the lens, the camera mount, the EVF holder, and several other rather major aluminum structural bits like they were made of balsa wood.

I was told it was the most impressive camera breakage that newsroom had ever seen.

I'm not sure what's worse: these stories or the absolutely sure knowledge that one day soon I'll have a story like this to tell

Thanks


A few weeks ago I was invited to the launch of the new Bentley V8 to do a bit of filming for free.

As soon as I arrived I got the "oh no..." feeling. The showroom windows were blacked out and inside everything was set up for a nightclub type launch. In other words, dark with lots of coloured lights. Downstairs was ever darker!!!

We prep the ENG camera up and I manage to do a few scenes with the presenter and an interview with the Sales Manager. Unfortunatly it ended up being a rush job as at 6:30pm I was unexpectedly asked to pack away the camera by 7pm when the event started. There were two other camera crews there with bigger cameras and they didn't want too many cameras running around. Fortunatly I had my 7d with me, but only the 17-55mm 2.8 and no 50mm 1.2 which woudl have worked btter. i then spent 3 hours walking around with the 7d trying to film people in the dark and changing lights.

In the end I had to scrap the interview and the Presenters footage and turn it into a crappy short quick cut video of he evening.

Then after I packed everything away in the car, found out that a bus had hit the front wing of my car!! Only knew it was a bus as a witness had left a note on my screen.

So what I did as a favour has cost me around £800 and I've ended up with crappy video.

PS. Did I mention how much I hate working with DSLR's !!!

This is the rough edit with temporary music. Still a lot of work to do on it.

I was expecting way worse. The video looks good! I was just cut the running time down by a bit. I would cut it down to no more than a minute and a half, especially since you weren't able to keep the interview.

My heart would have dropped if I got there and saw the lighting scenario. Everything came out great!

Thanks guys. Hopefully get round to finishing it next week.

The footage you get is great, but it's all the work arounds you have to do, especially the audio and me being very lazy doesn't help.

PS. Did you spot the famous film director in it.