We seniors have an annoying habit of trying to summarize our lives, to add everything up and see what, if anything, it all comes to. For me, well, I thought I'd start by remembering all the cameras I've destroyed in the past, oh, forty-five years or so. One of the reasons to bring this up now is that I just destroyed one Tuesday, so it's kind of fresh in my mind. Let's begin. So many entries.
The workhorse Mamiya RB 67 was my studio camera. On the day before my first senior high school appointments, I put the camera on my Cullman tripod. Or thought I did. As I was walking away the camera followed me. Or at least it followed me for a couple of inches, at which point, really unsecured at all, it dropped to the floor and exploded. I borrowed another one from Robert Pierce, then called Adorama Camera in NY and paid to have another one sent overnight to me. That was the first.
When I wasn't in the studio I was out shooting in different locations. Many of these photographs, (landscapes, mostly), were images that I simply wanted for myself. I had bought a wonderful Hasselblad 503C, the pinnacle of medium format cameras. Lighter than the RB 67, the Hasselblad was my "wedding camera", although it was portable and light enough to carry in a backpack and go hiking.
The Hasselblad 503C is a very expensive medium format camera. Without its lens, viewfinder, or film back, it's pretty boxy, too, but with rounded edges and corners. It's not very heavy. If you put one on an uneven rock at the top of a cliff at Tomales Point, it behaves kind of like a ball. Like the rocks in Death Valley's Race Course, it appears to move by itself. Sometimes it really does move by itself. One of my Hasselblads did exactly that. I quickly reached for it, but knowing that if I took a step closer I might join it in what looked like a 100' drop to the rocks below. Helpless, I watched it turn over and over about three times, then disappear. Hasselblads are made really well. Strong enough to go to the moon. But not survive a 100' fall to rocks.
Last year at this time I had a Nikon D 800 camera. (I still have it). For a while, though, I didn't have it. On Christmas Day I was at Point Lobos, taking photographs of the waves crashing onto the shore. Suddenly I realized that a really big wave had my name on it, and I found myself standing on a rock, unable to escape what I prayed might just be a little shower. The split second before my "shower", I took this image:
Jadyne was watching from the shore. She saw me disappear completely about 1/10th of a second later. I was drenched. My D 800 recorded this shot and no other. I was still standing, but reluctantly gave up the idea of more hiking. Having been slammed by a Pacific Ocean wave in air temperature just above freezing wasn't the kind of thing that made me say, "No problem; I'm just soaked. I've destroyed two cameras simultaneously, and I'm freezing. Let's keep going!" In my pocket was my Sony RX 100 IV, a wonderful little point and shoot camera that records RAW images with remarkable clarity. Here it is:
Isn't it cute?
It was about a week old. It was in my fleece pocket when the wave struck, and even after wringing out the fleece I recognized that it would never work again. I returned it to Best Buy the following week. "I just bought this camera, and it doesn't work," I complained. They tried to turn it on. No luck. "I think it sustained some water damage," I added, as they examined it more thoroughly, realizing that like the parrot in Monty Python, it wasn't about to do much of anything. "This camera is no more! He has ceased to be! E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! E's a stiff! Bereft of life, E rests in peace!" The wonderful people at Best Buy agreed that although I had never purchased an insurance policy they would give me another camera, provided that I buy the $99 insurance policy for at least a year. I did.
And so all was well...until the next month.
Okay, now we're in India. I've bought a replacement camera for the D 800, a slightly improved version called the D 810. (No need to show the photo; it looks a lot like the D 800). I loved this camera. We're in Cochin, southern India, choosing to dine at a wonderful rooftop restaurant right above the ferry terminal. While waiting for our dinners, I placed the D 810 and a 24-70 zoom lens on a little tabletop tripod to do time exposures of the cars driving up and down the street, blurry photographs of the passengers disembarking from the ferry. It's a beautiful night, and we're enjoying ourselves immensely. Here's one of those photographs. No, here's the last photograph that camera and lens ever took.
From the ledge of the rooftop restaurant in Cochin
After taking this image I reached for my camera and lens. Jadyne heard the noise. I said nothing. Neither one of us had ever heard the sound a camera makes when it falls two stories to a concrete driveway, but when you hear that sound you don't need much imagination.
Our fish in a basket hadn't arrived. I sat back down at the table, closed my eyes and was completely silent. I've taken classes in mindfulness. It was necessary right then to bring up the highlights of all twelve classes and apply them as best I could. A waiter went down to the driveway and retrieved what was left of my camera and lens.
Earlier that day I had torn a rather large hole in a pair of pants I brought on the trip. When we left Cochin I wrapped the camera and the lens in the pants and left all three in the wastebasket in our room.
All was good for almost a full year! On Tuesday, however, Jadyne and I and our friend Gail Stern hiked the Tennessee Valley trail, turning at the water's edge to scamper along the bottom of the cliffs, where the water meets the rock. Sensing that the tide was coming in, we turned to go back. Here are Jadyne and Gail, sensing that they might get nailed. "David!" Gail yelled. "I need your help to get around the slippery rock!" So, safe to say, this is the last photograph I took with my replacement Sony RX 100 IV camera.
Yesterday I bought a Sony RX 100 V camera from Best Buy. Tomorrow I will send off my wave destroyed Sony RX 100 IV to their repair services. Doubtless, they will dub it destroyed, and because I purchased insurance last January, I will get a refund. Or so I should say, "I expect to get a refund." If I were the manager of a Best Buy I wouldn't sell a camera to me.
We're leaving once again in three days for Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Point Lobos. No doubt I will have both cameras and insurance in hand. Fortunately, too, I know how to edit and add to my blog. Stay tuned.
January 1, 2017. Sometimes good things happen to bad people. In short, Best Buy not only authorized my camera for replacement, but when I brought it in they gave me their current discounted price, and because it was now an open box camera (opened by me, or course), I received an additional discount. The upshot? I have the upgraded camera, a thee year insurance plan, a store credit of $129. And me? I'm still a bad person,