Reading mode: Light Dark

a rant: people who destroy your equipment

Go to last post
maybe we, with our combined curse power, can cause the guy to slightly stumble while walking along the street (I haven't been particularly impressed with the effectiveness of my curses in the past )

Chas
newsshooterjim said:
chasg said:
A thousand curses upon those who, while running up to you drunkenly
yelling: "duuuuuuude, take my picture!!!!" (while you are right in
the middle of changing lenses), knock a camera body and two £1000+
lenses on the floor, and then kick one 30 feet into a crowd of 3000
drunken rowdy England rugby fans where it stays lost for almost 10
minutes (and emerges a battered remnant of itself).

Curses upon guys who do that (really mean curses...that's right, mean
ones!).

Chas

ps. anybody who tells me I should've been changing my lenses
elsewhere: pre-emptive curses upon you too
Click to expand...
Happens to me all the time...not. Seriously, sounds like you had a
tough day. If it'll make you feel a little better, I'll throw a few
curses their way too.

Jim Dean
Paid professional rubbernecker. I stop at the car wreck so you don't
have to.
Click to expand...
 
Well, to be fair to the England fans, they didn't actually give it back (I had to wade in with a flashlight to find it. Cold beer down the back of your neck is really unpleasant, by the way...)

And yes, I am insured (otherwise I would've been doing more than merely ranting :-)

Cheers!

Chas
Dominic G Smith said:
Wouldn't have happened with Scottish fans. (We wouldn't have given
the lens back.)

Seriously, I hope you are insured - with that amount of kit, I really
DO hope you are insured.
Click to expand...
 
What an absolute nightmare that guy was!

A 400 2.8? Hmm, dropping it on his foot might've been interesting ("accidentally", of course).

Glad that karma got him in the end though.

Chas
Vegasluvr said:
That is nothing. I had a Canon New F-1 with an FD400/2.8L lens on a
tripod at a Los Angeles Dodgers game. I was a rookie and a veteran
sports photographer came and deliberately knocked my camera/lens
over. At the time, I was just a newbie in the sports photography
business and I did not have any back up equipment so my shots were
ruined. Camera was damaged so I couldn't advance the film. The film
rails were bent and Canon determined it was beyond repair.

A few years later, I saw this clown at a San Diego Chargers game. I
was not a primary photographer at the tine but a runner for a
photographer. He was running alongside the end zone and whacked his
gear hard on a concrete wall - lens was destroyed. I laughed so hard.
Serves him right.

I am aware that some veteran 'pro' photographers do these nasty
things to rookie photographers. I have seen some of them deliberately
knock over other photographers equipment on purpose.
Click to expand...
 
I dunno, sounds like you earned access to me (of course, you were a shooter in more than the photographic sense).

Here in the UK the military has competitions for military photogs. I was really impressed with the work of the most recent winner (he took several awards), great stuff (though he did go through equipment at a faster than normal rate). Any lack of respect makes zero sense.

Chas
Buke said:
I hear ya on that one. During my last deployment to Iraq, I had
civilian shooters try and tell me that I didn't deserve exclusive
access into military areas just because I was a military shooter. Or
that I could go into combat areas that they couldn't because it was
too dangerous for them. I've had shooters ask for my images at
times. My answer to them all was that they could enlist, wear the
body armor, and carry a 9mm and an M-4 too. Shooters who thing they
"deserve" to treat fellow shooters as inferiors are the people I just
like to growl at. I've had civilian shooters on my home station try
and tell me to move and get out of the way so the "real"
photographers could work. Those were the ones who were escorted off
of my base.

Mark
--
A camera is just a light tight box. Photographs are created
mentally, they don't just
happen by accident.
Click to expand...
 
Actually, I had three bodies on the go, but only one is particularly good at high ISO. I was in the process of switching the long lens on to the high ISO camera when the incident happened.

Just so you know: I was taking shots with 4 different lenses on three bodies (telephoto, short zoom, ultra-wide rectilinear and fisheye). I find that three bodies is more than enough to hang off myself when moving around so much (one around neck, one over left shoulder, one over right shoulder). I've tried four, but the tradeoffs weren't worth it.

And yes, insurance is mandatory for a working photographer, indemnity at least, if not repair/replacement/theft (I don't think I implied not having any insurance in my original post, but if I did, my bad).

Cheers!

Chas
edleg said:
I would expect anyone (pro or otherwise) who has multiple $2000 (usd)
lenses to have multiple camera bodies to mount them on... then they
wouldn't have to change lenses during an event....

And equipment accident/replacement insurance to replace damaged
equipment would be likely.
Click to expand...
 
when I shot the semi-finals at the same location (at The O2 in London) the week before, I got an entire hour of photos after the game (insanely celebrating fans). When the finals were over, the 20 or so SA fans jumped around a bit, and the England fans slowly left with heads held low (seriously!)

I don't usually get involved in sports, and I had a cameraman friend warn me about what can happen when the home team loses (during the last football world cup, when England was knocked out, he and his team were assaulted and his kit was destroyed). That said, a stringer for Reuters at this recent event told me something that turned out to be totally accurate: "when a football game ends, the violence begins. When a rugby game ends, the violence ends".

Cheers!

Chas
Shoot the Drummer said:
I presume that was before we lost to the Springboks?

----------------------------------------------------
Chris
http://www.shootthedrummer.co.uk
See Profile for Kit
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, I have no idea how that guy moved around! Me, I find that 3 is my max for efficient movement (and I don't use lenses longer than 200mm f2)

Chas
RedFox88 said:
I'm sure everyone has seen the picture of a photographer with about 6
Canon camera bodies each with a lens on him. :)
Click to expand...
 
Hiya. Are remote cameras used a lot in baseball? Football (that is, soccer) photogs usually will have two cameras set up on small tripods behind the goals, triggered by radio.

Chas
Vegasluvr said:
If you are the team photographer, you get the prime locations behind
first base and home plate. You can then set up your tripods with two
or more camera bodies. But other photographers are out of luck.
Usally for sports you only needed two maybe three lenses. I use the
EF300/2.8L IS lens the most followed by the EF400/2.8L IS lens.
Click to expand...
 
I want the f1.2 version, the f1.8 version has some barrel distortion

Chas
Zone8 said:
Just get a 5mm to 5,000mm lens next time! :-)

(It IS April 1st today, isn't it? Must nip out and gather some
spaghetti off those spaghetti trees)
--
Zone8
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an
important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless
one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject
and mastery of his process. -Edward Weston
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS
Click to expand...
 
Hi John,

I shoot 10 or so weddings a year. While very few of them have had 3000 guests I have had more than a little bit of champagne sprayed on my equipment during late reception parties (and the horrors of: "hey, let me use your camera to take your picture" )

Weddings have their own dangers :-)

Cheers!

Chas
John Motts said:
Think I'll stick to weddings.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, and my wife too (hmm, that might prevent her from noticing me buying new kit though...could be worth it!)

Chas
Zone8 said:
Try not washing for a month - that should keep them at bay!
--
Zone8
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an
important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless
one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject
and mastery of his process. -Edward Weston
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS
Click to expand...
 
Sorry to hear about your experience; I feel for you and would also have been extremely upset.

I have noticed that when English folk are in groups and are drinking, they tend to get very roudy, loose control of their sensibilities and sometimes even get very aggresive and physical.

When I see a group of English people on the street that are drinking, I avoid them like the plague. For some reason, they always tend to show their frustration through drinking.

What has happened to the English culture that they need to drink so much alcohol?

Jacques
--
The truth about Central banks oppression:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936
Failing monetary system:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279
Vote for global freedom:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=ron+paul&search=Search
View DPR with wider columns:
http://friend.smugmug.com/gallery/3106909 .
 
chasg said:
I shoot 10 or so weddings a year. While very few of them have had
3000 guests I have had more than a little bit of champagne sprayed
on my equipment during late reception parties (and the horrors of:
"hey, let me use your camera to take your picture" )

Weddings have their own dangers :-)

Cheers!

Chas
John Motts said:
Think I'll stick to weddings.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Hi Chas

I'm usually long gone by the time the guests are completely drunk! I do hear some grim stories from the hotel staff about weddings later on, weddings where everyone was just fine earlier when I had been there - guests becoming aggressive / sick / going missing - what a shame I seem to miss those!

Regards
John
 
Back in the olden days of yore, I was covering my college basketball team in the NCAA tournament (Elite Eight round). So I was down there with the mass of credentialed photogs which made the baseline much more crowded than during the regular season. They had all the gear, including banks of 10K ws strobes in the rafters, lenses, monopods, vests, bags, motor drives. And there I was with a crank-wind Pentax SLR and a 135 and 50mm lens. They guys around me were jostling one another at times, but they always made sure I had an angle, too.

Late in the game, the penultimate drive to the basket in the waning seconds, the star player gets the ball low post. One move, a second, a head fake, ball back on the floor (all the time, the clatter of motor drive PJ cams sounding like a column of armored vehicles). One final move toward the basket, then the column of cameras go silent. Then wait a minute - that wasn't the move to the basket. He pivots and splits his defenders, and as he released his leaner, the only shutter click was mine. (I'd seen this move before.)

The AP photographer next to me paid me $400 to crank out that roll of film, a lot of money in those days, and I filled out some sort of form. Don't know if the photo ever ran, but that was my first paid gig.
--
Wilfred M Rand
http://www.pbase.com/wilfredmrand/
 
Hmm, excellent strategy. I tend to stay to the bitter end: my packages are multi-tiered, and almost every client I've had recently has paid for me to stay until well into the red-faced stage. If it wasn't for the typical DJ lighting scheme (green lights, yellow lights, red lights, pink lights, strobes, smoke, everything from the 80's!) I'd have some serious photoshopping to do to to get rid of those bright red cheeks :-)

Chas
John Motts said:
chasg said:
I shoot 10 or so weddings a year. While very few of them have had
3000 guests I have had more than a little bit of champagne sprayed
on my equipment during late reception parties (and the horrors of:
"hey, let me use your camera to take your picture" )

Weddings have their own dangers :-)

Cheers!

Chas
John Motts said:
Think I'll stick to weddings.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Hi Chas
I'm usually long gone by the time the guests are completely drunk! I
do hear some grim stories from the hotel staff about weddings later
on, weddings where everyone was just fine earlier when I had been
there - guests becoming aggressive / sick / going missing - what a
shame I seem to miss those!

Regards
John
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top