"Yeah Yeah Ye--- No NO NOOOOO!!!" - Camera Issues of the Worst Kind
Two months ago, I had tickets to one of my very favorite live acts, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Every single time I see them, there is an electricity on the stage that is rarely matched by their counterparts. Long story short, I only had a ticket and not a photo pass. The publication who eventually gave me the assignment couldn't secure a ticket for entry of their photographer and I was their plan B.
To make it count, I waited for 5 hours in line before the show to get a prime spot at the front of the stage (There were actual people in line well before my arrival). Upon entering the venue, I was at the stage, front and center. It was the perfect spot. My plan was to shoot the first couple of YYYs songs, enjoy myself, and then head to the back and get wide shots of the band's encore.
Xray Eyeballs was the opener and it was a departure to see and shoot them outside of Death By Audio or an equally small venue. Unusually, the lighting design was really on-point and I was pretty happy with it. Not only was there some great back-lighting, but there were bright spots on each of the 4 band members. Was a breeze to shoot. If the opener has good lighting, this bodes well for the headliner. I was pretty stoked to shoot YYYs. Now, my normal workflow is to switch memory cards after I'm done shooting a band and prep for the next band. When I inserted a new card, it wasn't reading properly. There were no numbers on the counter on the LCD. I figured the card failed and I switched to another. By this time, my Nikon D300 was acting very strange. It wasn't reading or writing to the card, and eventually, the camera wasn't responding. The camera was even ignoring my power down with the on/off switch. I had about 30 minutes to try and find an answer on my smartphone. Would I find the answer to my immediate problem and get to shoot one of the best live bands? Nope.
Yeah, I never found a way to get things working. Sadly, I left my film camera at home because I was trying to travel a little lighter. Had I not left it at home, I would have had some pretty cool 3200 ISO Ilford b&w and some Kodak Portra Color 800 shots. I'm really kicking myself over the decision to leave it home.
So, instead, I had my Fuji Instax and decided to shoot with the last 6 remaining shots in the cartridge. I was desperate.
So, what the hell happened, St. Clair?
Only 5 of the 6 Instax photos came out well. I also further confirmed that the camera on my Droid Bionic is absolutely worthless. Even with bright stage lighting. I tried to take 2 or 3 shots and gave up. Never buy from Motorola. Ever. Garbage.
In the end, the publication didn't have enough images to warrant a gallery (I didn't expect them to, and seriously who could blame them).
Okay, but what about the camera itself?
From what I can surmise, the CF card shorted out the card input which affected the power supply. I've had issues with SanDisk cards in the past (lost data, corrupted), but never this severe.
What now?
I have a semi-professional camera body that is dead in the water. So for April and May, I only shot three shows. Marnie Stern @ Music Hall of Williamsburg, Beach Day (also at Music Hall), and Laura Stevenson @ Bowery Ballroom. All of which, I shot on film with my Nikon F100. I'm still waiting to develop the last two, Probably in the next week or so.
But, this has a happy ending of sorts. My dad completely surprised me by picking me up a Nikon D600. He saw how unhappy I was about the whole situation and told me he "owed me for the last few Christmases". I told him that he didn't have to and his girlfriend (who is practically my stepmom) told me that he wasn't going to take no for an answer and to just "go with it". And I did and I'm very, very grateful.
As for my busted D300, I'm eventually taking my camera into Phototech to get an estimate on the damage, but at this point it's probably not worth it. I've already put in a few hundred dollars to replace the shutter. I'm not sure that it's worth pouring more money into. It would be nice to have a backup, but I'll have to figure that out in the coming months. I'd rather put my money into better glass.