When we were on our holiday last month, we went to the beach for our (as it happens) first photowalk of the year.
Behold the beauty…
It was right when I was taking this set of photos that my battery light began flashing. I carried on taking pictures while I made a mental note to charge the camera once we were back at the house.
OH MY WORD.
And then it hit me – I didn’t pack the charger. Panic!
I used a different bag to pack all my cables and chargers so I didn’t notice that the bag was lighter than it’s supposed to be.
I contacted a few friends and one said I could use hers. Her charger was for an older camera and didn’t fit my battery.
Another friend said they are Nikon people (!) so no luck.
Long story short, eventually we went to a camera warehouse (I could have stayed for hours!) and I reluctantly forked over a good chunk of unnecessary cash for this charger.
Just in time because my camera stopped working about an hour after the purchase.
It’s not about the money; I just really don’t like wasting money on things I had in Jhb!
However, this not-so-little mistake made me do two things differently:
- I will now start using my packing checklist again.
You see, I’d become a little too complacent. Yes, I have my list but I essentially know what I need to pack every time we go on holiday and so I’d stopped properly checking the packing against the actual paper list.
2. I took TONS of photos after the camera was charged again
My one friend checked with me at one point to see if I still wanted to do all our plans given that I was running around quite a bit… and I said YES! You see, I felt like I needed to go take lots of beautiful photos to justify the purchase of that unnecessary charger.
Crazy but true.
I went to the Bo-Kaap twice, saw many friends and we did a Red City Bus tour. All those photos are priceless and would not have been even half as good with my iphone camera.
Cape Town does grey buildings so well. I have photos of three different buildings in the most stunning shades of grey.
Taken in the Bo-Kaap. My latest Instagram pic is taken from the other angle in front of this very house.
My three loves
Have you ever forgotten chargers for phones or cameras when you’ve gone on holiday?
I need a packing list. I forgot the extra camera memory card when we went to Cape Town 2 years ago and had to buy a new one which was a mission as we couldn’t find a shop that sold them close to where we had gone touring for the day (the wine farms). Last year I lost the extra battery when we coming home from Plett. The one thing I cannot do without on holiday is the camera.
Me too!
I do recommend the packing list 🙂
I once also forgot my camera charger on a long weekend in Pilansberg. And although plenty of people had Canon cameras and chargers not one fitted mine. I never knew that almost every 2 or 3 models have a different size battery. Now my charger is permanently in my camera bag
That’s a plan! I’m still debating whether to sell this one and keep the other in my bag. I keep swopping bags though. I mainly just take the kit lens with me and only the big camera bag (which I’m also trying to sell) for “real shoots”
Aaah… your photos are so lovely… When I had my baggage stolen on the way to Zambia… away went all my chargers. I was able to borrow a Nikon, yes I am that Nikon person, battery for a while each day… but it so cramped my style!!! I will never take extra luggage again, I am a hand luggage all the way kind of gal!!!
I’m so very pleased there was someone on your trip with the same charger!
That used to happen to me a lot in the days before good phone cameras, so now I always make a point to have two batteries that are always charged so I can at least get a good number of pictures and thankfully my new phone has a long battery life and takes quite good pictures. I once “misplaced” my Fitbit charger while out of the country and I discovered different fitbits have different chargers. Thankfully I found the charger a day later.
My Canon would have probably lasted had it been completely and fully charged before we left. Usually I charge less than once a month so it has a very long battery life 🙂