Seperation Anxiety
February 1st, 2008
At the beginning of 2008 I had some lofty goals, not really New Years resolutions just goal, to get increase my photography knowledge and to practice the techniques I read about a lot more. So I had started the year determined to participate in the 365 day photo challenge. I joined a couple of the Flickr groups to help keep me motivated, as well as subscribed to a few photo challenge sites. Well needless to say I lasted about 10 days into the 365 Day challenge. During this time I was struggling to take quality shots and I found myself just taking photo’s without any preparation or thought before hand. Now I know that not all shots need to be prepared but I was becoming a bit disheartened with my quality so I decided to stop the challenge. I am not giving up my photography I am just refocusing my goals. I have decided, instead of just taking random photo’s and posting them up I will be instead focusing more on the techniques and theories of good photography.
At the moment I am in the middle of reading Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography (Updated Edition)
Now that all being said, I have some bad news. My camera (Canon Rebel XTi) has been placed on the IR (injured reserve) list. The other day I was about to go out to my friends birthday dinner at a local sea food restaurant called Catch. I was thinking that I probably wouldn’t want to carry around my 24-70mm lens since it is pretty heavy. So I switched and attached my 50mm f1.8 lens. Lighter, smaller and still very quick for the low light situations I would be in. After I had attached the lens I decided to take it off and make sure the optics were clean before I headed out. Much to my surprise the 50mm lens was stuck. I couldn’t turn it more than 1/4 of the way. I tried with a bit of pressure and still nothing. So I kept applying a bit more force. Eventually the lens POPPED off with a crack, and at that moment I knew something had happened.
I looked at my 50mm lens and the mounting system had broken. Now the lens isn’t completely destroyed it was just a chunk of plastic missing from the mounting system and it was twisted out of place a bit. I was a bit miffed and worried I would have to replace the lens. Calmly I rotated the mounting system back to the right alignment and carefully tried it back on my camera. everything seemed great. The lens mounted and unmounted fine. The optics seemed to be aligned and clear still but then I tried to take a shot. Oh the horror!!
The auto focus wasn’t working. I checked to make sure the lens was selected to auto focus. It was. I took the lens off and reattached it and still no auto focus. I then tried my 24-70 lens to see if that one worked, it didn’t. That is when I took the lens off and looked at the camera body. Much to my chagrin, I noticed that one of the dip pins used to connect the auto focus feature to the lens was not popping back out. It was stuck down ant therefore would not make contact with the lens and therefore the auto focus wasn’t working. After a few choice words mumbled under my breath I calmed down and knew it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I had bought extended coverage on my camera when I bought it. Phew!
Over the next couple of days I started the claim process and everything is going to be fine but I am shipping my camera to Ontario to get repaired. Yesterday I posted the package with my camera in it and now I am without it for about a week.
What do I do, how do I cope? I guess I am just going to have to find other things to do with my time. Maybe work on this blog and site, maybe read a bit more about photography, maybe catch up on some of the post processing and thin out my older photos (I have a lot that need to be deleted). Or as the girlfriend would like, pay more attention to her 
Here’s to hoping my camera is back soon all injuries healed and ready for a few good workouts.
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