Murphy is watching..
It’s midnight, and I’ve just come back from a wandering set of shoots throughout the Toronto area. I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, and just needed to get out and shoot some locations that I’d been thinking about.
It all started off well, I stopped by the Humber Bay park near the foot of Park Lawn and drove out to the point for a few long exposure cityscapes, matching the dawn cityscapes I’d taken last week..
The Toronto Skyline At Dawn
The shoot went alright, but as I decided to do some long exposure water shots with multiple flash light painting, I got two pops off before my flash batteries went kaput. Now I did have a spare flash with me, but there were some sketchy folks around, and I didn’t really feel like displaying more gear, or even spending THAT much longer hanging around, So I merely chose to move on to location 2 and settled for what I HAD gotten.
Reflections on Toronto
That all being done, I headed downtown as I’d had it in my mind to shoot from a top the Eaton’s Center Parking Garage.
I hadn’t been up there in years, and with all the development and the growth of Yonge-Dundas Square, I thought there might be some opportunities. Not so much…
Firstly, the parking garage is under construction, so there was a bit of snow fence jumping to be done to explore my angles.
Several of the “perches” I chose allowed me intriguing views of the street, but alas, the low light quality of the EOS Rebel is not renowned, and little was even salvageable (we’ll see what Lightroom 3 can do with this old Camera noise once its out of beta, but I’m not expecting miracles.)
Still, I wasn’t disheartened, as I’d a final plan that would have me driving back down Queen St, through the trendy areas, with a window down and my camera on a tripod shooting out a window at the action with a remote shutter release. (Note: This is probably illegal under the new hands free laws, but I hope to never find out.) Unfortunately, as I was switching lenses and futzing with my tripod to get it stable in the back of the mini van, I discovered it no longer wanted to turn on…
Swapped batteries, reseated lens, reseated CF card.. Changed lenses… *Sigh* No luck, retried a few previous things, just in case.. *sigh* A short drive home later, batteries in the charger, CF card dumped and remounted, coffee (decaf) in hand, and the camera works…
The moral of the story is, Not only should you carry your spares with you, but REMEMBER you’re carrying them and where they are.
As an aside, I realize I’ve been horribly under utilizing this website, and I do hope to correct that, For those who would like to hear more and keep up when I DO managed to update, you can also keep track of me as Darkelflx @ Twitter & Flickr
You know its arbitrary when…
Upon arriving at the airport I was stopped before customs and informed I was only allowed 1 carry on item. As I was being told this I was standing in front of a sign saying that one carry on and one personal item were allowed.
I politely informed the man that my backpack was my personal item and contained my laptop and accessories.
Here’s where it gets surreal…
Officer: “Do you have any paper in there?”
Me: “Yes”
Officer: “Then you’ll need to check one of them”
Me: dumbstruck stare
Now, in the man’s defense he then told me I could just move the paper from bag A(with laptop) to bag B (without laptop), but really. Suddenly paper is the defining line between personal and non-personal items?
What security measures can justify determining bag type by paper content????
I’ll be kind and not submit readers to my furious thoughts about seeing the full body scanner in action.
I shutter to think…
So many of you might know already, but my go to camera is none other than the ‘classic’ EOS Rebel 300d, 6.3mega pixels of goodness (as long as you stay at ISO 200 or less).
Needless to say, as one might expect, a camera that has been in use since 2003 has probably had some use.
Yes, it’s time for a replacement, you don’t need to tell me. But until money drops out of the sky, this camera is still capable of earning me money.
What concerns me is the fact that this camera is actually only expected to live less than 50,000 shutter actuations. In 7 years, that’s NOT a lot of pictures.
I’d love to hear how many shots people have had on their cameras, any shocking numbers out there? Horror stories of failure?
In the past two weeks the camera has shown signs of imminent failure, one time I was arriving at the canon service depot before the mirror dropped back down.
