Jul 17 2008
Photography Nightmare
This will be a pretty short, non-visual post, as a few weekends ago I fell into the trap of “trusting” my equipment, and then it proceeded to fail, and I missed photographs of an important family event!
I should know better, and take my own advice, but on this occasion I got cocky and ended up paying for it.
My cousin christened her two children not long ago and I travelled from Queensland down to South Australia to officially become their Godmother.
I was excited also to see the kiddies, as I hadn’t seen them in about 6 months, and they had of course changed so much.
As I packed for the trip I decided to take my 1GB memory card, which had faithfully served me for a few years. Briefly contemplating taking a back up memory card, I foolishly decided against it.
Arriving in South Australia I was snapping away, taking candid photos of the kids and enjoying catching up with my cousin.
Come the morning of the christening I began taking photos outside the church and was about to temporarily (and somewhat reluctantly) bequeath my camera to another family member, to take photos of the ceremony (on semi-auto, which I had preset for them), when I took one last photo.
To my horror, the message “error” appeared on the LCD screen at the back of my camera. I couldn’t believe it! I kept trying - turning the camera off, removing the battery and the memory card and putting it back. Nothing worked. I didn’t want to attempt formatting the memory card, as it would have erased all the great photos I’d already taken.
Of all the times for my camera to stop working! So, I had to rely on other guests and family members to take photos. After the official part of the ceremony, I “high jacked” someone’s camera to take photos, but it just wasn’t the same as my SLR and Canon Speedlite 580EX…
At the gathering afterwards I didn’t have a camera to take photos, and it was a strange feeling. I always had a camera in my hands and wandered amongst people taking posed and candid photos. Now I had to actually stand still and just enjoy the event! It was a nice change, but I still prefer having my camera.
So, the moral of this story is always carry a spare - be it a memory card (and after this experience I’ll be carrying two spares), or a battery. Another lesson learnt was to have multiple smaller sized memory cards, because if the card fails you, it doesn’t matter if it’s 512MB or 4GB, you’ve lost the ability to take photos!
