Sunday, July 30, 2006

A Photographer's Fear

A photographer needs his equipment to work right. There is nothing worse than getting to a beautiful sunrise and having an equipment malfunction.

This morning we had the best sunrise we've been able to photograph in a long time. I always take both my main 35mm camera and a pocket digital I carry regularly. The sunrise had a beautifully golden orange light flooding the scenery. As shutters were snapping and lenses auto-focusing, a strange sight and sound infected my Canon. The optical viewfinder got darker than normal. The auto-focus would not lock in on target. I manually-focused on several shots before I realized what was wrong. My main lens's aperture was locked all the way down to its smallest opening! I tried to jar it, power cycle it, anything to get it to free up and open as it should. Changing it manually did no good. It released itself when it wanted to and froze up as it wanted to.

I changed to my telephoto/zoom lens, and all worked as it should. Unfortunately, however, the 75-300mm lens is not the best for wide-open scenery. The camera itself is not the culprit. My 28-80mm lens is flaky. I will have to see about getting it repaired or replaced. Fortunately, it is not a high-priced lens.

The accompanying photo is one I took with my digital this morning. I'll have to wait to see how my 35mm shots come out when I get them developed.

2 comments:

Shelley said...

Beautiful shot Dale. Lovely lovely. I hope all is well with the lens. Sigh..that sure can be disheartening.

Jeanne said...

Gorgeous photograph~
Enjoy the blessings of each day!
I treasure your friendship of both you and Shelley!

Smiles and hugs across the miles!