My camera utterly and completely died today. Remember how it was having some shutter issues where the mirror wouldn’t flip all the way, meaning I had to use it upside-down with high shutter speeds?
Well, today, it decided to completely die. The mirror won’t flip at all anymore. It makes an odd grinding sound when the shutter button is pressed, then displays “Err” in the viewfinder and on the little screen.
Here’s the last picture it took.
It had a nice long life. Got it March 22, 2006 and it’s taken well over 100,000 photos since then and has travelled from New York to San Francisco to Thailand to France.
(It’s also funny, given that the first photo I posted from this camera was a photo of Mark, and this last photo I am posting from it is also a Mark. The first photo it took, however, was Keith.)
Relatedly, today was board games at Jeremy’s. It was a lot of fun. I played Through The Ages, which took a while (as promised before we started). I was doing decently well (was making the second most research points each round, and the most culture, and had 9 civil actions to spend each turn) until the guy with a massive (75+ power) military declared a Holy War on me. Given that I had exactly two points of strength (and only had two military actions), I lost massively and all of my guys were killed except for one lonely worker producing 2 food. Oh well. Nevertheless, I only came in fourth by two culture points.
On the way home, I decided to walk (from 3rd and 20th) while Mark took the Muni. I managed to beat him home (the Embarcadero and Brannan stop). I was actually quite impressed. Either I walk faster than I think I do, or the Muni hit more red lights than I was expecting, as he only had a 3 minute wait for it when I started walking.
So that’s been my day. It has been a good day.
Edit:
A list of all my cameras and statuses, for my curiosity’s sake, along with the cost at the time. (Ordered by date of acquiring.)
Intel Pocket PC Camera – $200 – Functional, back in Arizona. Not really worthwhile to use. (640 x 480 max resolution with fixed focus and aperture and shutter speed.)
Olympus C-3000 Zoom – $400 – Partially functional. Light meter is broken, causing photos to come out completely black.
Kodak DX6490 – $550 – Dead. Very dead. Smashed into pieces dead.
Nikon D50 – $570 – Dead. Shutter is broken, mirror no longer flips up.
*Nikon 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6 – $0 – Partially functional. Can no longer focus to infinity.
Canon AE-1 – $120 – Functional. Not used as much due to lack of film and darkroom access.
*Canon 50mm f/1.8 – $0 – Functional
*Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 – $100 – Functional.
*Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 – $200 – Functional.
*Nikon 50mm f/1.8 – $130 – Functional.
Samsung SL30 – $80 – Functional. Still new, still happy.
