About 10 years go I was photographing dragonflies and ran out of film. So I took out the exposed film, and walked away from the tripod. However the tripod was embedded in the silt of a stream, and my walking away through the squelchy sediment unbalanced the tripod, tipping the camera and lens into the stream. Goodbye camera (Nikon F90X) and hello big lens cleaning bill. On another occasion I dropped an exposed film into a bog. And there's a free like new Nikon DR3 right angle finder in the New Forest for anyone who can find it, after I put it down, and promptly lost it. I had a film lost in the post, and another turned out blue when the Kodak development machine broke. I sent my best two slides to a well known printer, who returned them by normal post (I had paid for recorded) and that was the last I saw of the slides and I never saw the prints. Touchwood, my recent antics have been less costly. Thus far.
I suppose I now count my mistakes as learning experiences and I try not to make the same mistake again e.g. inappropriate shutter speed or aperture, unstable support, wrong location, wrong time of day etc. If this lark was easy, it wouldn't be challenging and fun. Would it?
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