Wednesday, July 27, 2016

OH NOES!

by Dotti


Last week, my granddaughter attended an annual acting camp for children that is organized and run by the local community theater. The theater director asked me to take photos during the week at camp. Now, I’d like to tell you I did this “pro bono” but since I’m not a professional pnotographer, I’ll have to tell the truth: it was a volunteer gig.

Soooo – the night before camp started, I decided to get my gear ready. While changing the lens on my Canon EOS 6D, the camera slipped and my finger touched the mirror. You guessed it – nothing. Nada. No focus. No shutter button response. Nothing. Heartbreak! In spades.


I did have two fortunate things going for me, though. One was my backup camera, my trusty Canon EOS 60D, which was my primary camera for about four years before upgrading. The second thing is that when I bought my 6D last December, they were running a free deal on their CarePAK Plus, no questions asked repair or replacement contract. Thank goodness I had the foresight to enroll! With my heart in my throat, I took my baby, very carefully wrapped, to the post office to send Express Next Day service. With a bit of luck, she should be home in about a week’s time.

But in the meantime, I had a camp event to shoot.

This wasn’t just any old acting camp. An Irish performing arts group, “Uplift”, from Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, (which is the sister city to my home town) was visiting. They were here two years ago and are back this year to give our children and grandchildren an extraordinary experience in performing arts. Here’s the thing about their shows: they.move.quickly.


With that in mind, I made a radical decision: I was going to use my “action” mode to shoot the camp. I knew that as fast as the “action” was, I did not need to be fiddling with shutter speed, ISO, and the knobs on my camera or constantly looking at my LCD screen. I needed to be mentally and emotionally tuned into the “action” around me. Okay. I was convinced and I swallowed my pride to use an automatic camera setting.


It was the right choice. The theater, of course was dark. Theater lighting for a show like this is a photographer’s nightmare (I learned a lot about Lightroom last week as well!), so I just didn’t need to be bogged down playing with the widgets and gidgets on my camera.


 Which brings me to the two points of today’s post.

One: If you are able to get some sort of maintenance package for your camera and lenses, do it. This episode will cost me only the price of the postage. While considerable, as postage goes, it’s a whale of a lot less than a camera repair bill. And if you can, keep a camera for backup. You just never know. I’m as careful as they come when handling my camera and never thought it would happen to me.

Second: If the situation warrants, don’t be too proud to use automatic mode for the shooting you may need to do.

It was a fun week, filled with learning opportunities for me. It was a joy to watch my granddaughter participate in this unique event. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Now – if only someone would invite me to Carrickfergus for a shoot …

4 comments:

AFishGirl said...

What vibrant energy you caught in these shots! It looks like it was a magical week for all, wish I'd been there to see and hear it. I am listening well to your advice. Too late for a care package for my old camera but the auto setting thing, truly, there are times when time is of the essence and all I'm doing is fiddling with settings. Thank you, Dotti, I really needed to hear this.

AFishGirl said...

What vibrant energy you caught in these shots! It looks like it was a magical week for all, wish I'd been there to see and hear it. I am listening well to your advice. Too late for a care package for my old camera but the auto setting thing, truly, there are times when time is of the essence and all I'm doing is fiddling with settings. Thank you, Dotti, I really needed to hear this.

Cathy H. said...

I'm so sorry about your camera. You were fortunate to be offered the care package! Although we try very hard to protect our cameras, accidents do happen. You did an excellent job at capturing these actives actors! I can't imaging working in those tough conditions; low light and lots of movement. You're right about automatic mode. I use it a lot when I'm just wandering around. I enjoy the experience of wandering and don't want the hassle of fidgeting with my camera.

terriporter said...

Oh, no! I'll bet you were in a tizzy having that happen the night before! Having a back-up camera is so important. When I bought my 5DM2, I kept my old 5D and, although I haven't had to use it yet, it is comforting knowing it's there just in case. As for using an auto setting, I think once we move into manual, we don't even think of using those auto settings but I can sure see how doing that saved the day in this instance. I've been there before where the light's too low and the action is too fast and had to play and play with my settings trying to figure out how to capture it so I'm going to file this little tip away for when that happens again. Great shots of what looks like a very fun time for one and all!

Post a Comment

Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. If for any reason you are unable to leave a comment here on this post, please leave your comment on our Facebook page or in our Flickr discussion group. We love hearing from you!

 
© Focusing On Life