You Know It's Bad When...

You may have been able to surmise from todays blog title and the image above that I had a little problem. You would be most correct in you thoughts. I did, and it broke, yuck!

I was finishing a shoot and of course every one was in a hurry (including yours truly) and I was going to put the camera back in the bag sitting on the ground in the parking lot. I had my flash on the camera for some fill light and was taking it off. The 580EX II flash units do not have the traditional clamping wheel to secure them to the camera, it is a little lever. To release the lever one must press a button and the push the lever. I found out (the hard way) that I must either grow another hand, or adjust my grip on said flash unit while removing it from the camera. As the story continues, the flash exited the camera a moment (that is all it takes) prematurely and the juggling act ensued. Now I have seen juggling acts and I am not even going to pretend that I am a novice juggler. The result was that I save the flash unit but was standing over a camera laying lifeless on the asphalt.

This is a point in ones life where you have a choice to make. you either a) jump up and down screaming at the top of your voice spewing expletives that only sailors know; or b) man up, admit to your self that your yourself caused this situation and accept the consequences. I chose option c) denial. 

Once I worked through the emotional trepidation of what just occurred with that unique clunk that a camera makes when it comes in contact with something way to hard. I picked it up and looked through the view finder and saw absolutely nothing... I looked at the outside of  the camera for visible damage and on the circular polarizer I noticed the glass had a chip out of it at one edge, this was not a good sign. Unfortunately I was to shoot a christening immediately after this traumatic episode. The only thing we had left was my wife's Nikon point and shoot which is a really great camera.

Once we got home from the christening I started to troubleshoot the XTi to find the mirror had been dislodged buy the impact. Soooo, being the mechanically inclined person that I am, the fingers went to work. I was able to get the mirror back into position and the shutter was working on command so my hopes were high. I could now see through the lens and when I half press the shutter release I got the ever comforting beep when the AF has done it's thing. It was looking good until I realized that was the last AF beep the camera would make. I quickly changed lenses hoping the EF 16-35 f/2.8 L lens was not messed up. I put on my 24-70 and it too would not beep. I told myself that was a good thing because the lenses were worth three times what the XTi body was. I will get into the reason I have an XTi with that kind of glass in another post.

Time will tell as to the outcome of the little XTi.

Cya Later... Doug