Last night I had the honor of being an official photographer at The Good Foot’s 2nd Annual 4TheLuvofit B-Boy/B-Girl Jam. One of the organizers found my jumping photos on Flickr and asked me if I would be willing to volunteer to help shoot the event. After watching the video of last year’s show, I was sold. Plus, who could argue with getting into breakdancing battle for free and having full access to photograph anything and anyone I wanted.
The put it simply, the show was amazing. The dancers were super talented. The crowd was totally into it. And there was just generally good vibes going around. I was assigned to shoot the battles (there were 5 photographers working the event) and had a great spot up front and center to capture all the action. There was so much energy and excitement that I almost got lost watching the show and had to remember that I was actually working and not just in the audience.
The night would have been absolutely perfect except for a couple of things. First of all, my D70’s shutter died half way through the battles. I recently went past 60,000 actuations, so I really should have expected shutter failure soon, but it just never crossed my mind while shooting. Luckily, there was a 2nd photographer shooting the battles with me, and I borrowed one of the other photographers’ Digital Rebel XTi for the remainder of my shots. Still, I was devastated that my beloved camera had finally failed me.
Second, while shooting the semi-finals with the borrowed XTi, one of the dancers lost track of where the dance area was and kicked me in the head and hit the lens. My glasses went flying, and I was seeing stars for a moment, but, luckily someone retrieved my glasses for me, and I kept on shooting. However, the lens on the XTi wouldn’t auto-focus anymore. I didn’t have time worry about it and switched to manual focus until the next break. It was already awkward enough using a different camera in the middle of a shoot, so I did what I could to make the best of it (I still got some great shots, thankfully).
During the break, I checked the lens, and it appeared that the front element was knocked loose from the AF mechanism. A bit of forceful nudging pushed it back into place, and the lens was auto-focusing again. I’m not sure how much actual damage there was on the lens, but the owner didn’t seem to care too much (it was the cheapo kit lens). He saw me get kicked and totally understood that it was not my fault. I still didn’t feel good about putting someone else’s gear at risk, but I am thankful that he offered up his camera so I could finish up the job.
All in all, though, the night was a blast. I got to see an awesome show. I got some really nice shots of the dancers (which will be processed later this week after the organizer reviews them). And I made some new friends and possibly recruited a couple of new people into the Seattle Flickrites.
Now I just need to figure out what I’m going to do about my busted D70. It’ll cost about $300-$400 to replace the shutter, and I’d be out a camera for 3-5 weeks. I don’t think it’s worth the cost, since that’s the going rate for a used D70s online. If I replaced the shutter, I’d still have a camera with a sticky AE-L/AF-L button, a top LCD screen with a busted backlight, and a sensor with a couple of scratches on it (yeah, my fault completely on that one). I might as well put that money towards a new body.
The dilemma here is I’m on a waiting list for a D300, but it’s likely that I won’t actually see one in my hands for quite some time. I could look for a used D70 or D70s, but I was planning on upgrading gear anyway, so it would almost seem like a waste of money. I don’t really want a D80, because it’s basically an incremental upgrade for me (megapixels don’t matter to me, it’s more about the control setup). I could also just bite the bullet and get a D200, which was my original upgrade plan before the D300 was announced, and wait for a while until the D300’s are a bit easier to get. The D50 is not an option, because it lacks a lot of features that my D70 has. The D40x is definitely out of the question, since it won’t work with my older AF-D lenses.
Decisions, decisions. This is going to take some thinking.
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