Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/06/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Talk about working on borrowed time as far as a catastrophic equipment failure goes my associate here at Journal Communications has got be ridding on BORROWED time. This guy is probably the most tallented photographer I have ever had the honor of knowing and working with, and he gets results using equipment that most pros would cringe at. Until 2 years ago he owned 1 camera body (Nikon FA--thats right the old FA), 3 lenses a 24 2.8, 50 and a 135 2.8. We produce short run magazines all over Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and 1 magazine in Colorado, so we do a lot of travel. While most of this is realativly close, we drive just about everywhere, you still are far from a good camera store. (As far as I am concerened Nashville does not have a good camera store, but at least you can rent the basics here). He has alwasy been lucky and not had his gear go down in the middle of a trip and had to cut it short because of a camera failure. This has always amazed me. Maybe I am just hard on equipment, but I have had to resort to back up bodies on several occasions while his old FA keeps chugging along. He has recently upgraded to a second body (Nikon 8008) and added a 300 4.0 to his arsenal. Anyway as I said this guy gets unbelievable results and it is all on this basic Nikon gear. Just goes to show you that tallent is what creats the image, not the camera. >We live in a disposable economy. I have this box in my living room >containing the autopsied corpses of an N90s and an SB-26 that died from >condensation (pneumonia?). But there is no visible damage. Two repair >shops, including Nikon, has said to just throw them away. But it hurts. Yes I know the feeling Donal, I have an old canon 600 4.5 that had been converted to Nikon mount that is only good for a paper weight because the mount is totally screwed up. I can not find anyone to fix it, including a friend who used to be the NPS repair tech in Atlanta. He said it was beyond repiar because the parts needed to fix it are nowhere to be found. What a waste. >But with the F5 being the same price as an R6, it is no longer >"disposable," at least not on editorial rates today. Heck on editorial rates today a Kodak instimatic is hardly disposable!! Harrison McClary hmphoto@delphi.com http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto