I survived a scare where for the best part of three days I believed my Sony a6000 was dead to the world. I was resigned to taking iPhone photos — which I am generally good at — since carrying a Canon 6D around is not feasible. I was also pricing a replacement, a Sony a6500 at about $1200 used. As well as considering the newly announced full-frame a7r iii ($3000) in the same way someone considers being married to Giselle Bündchen as being a not altogether terrible idea. Some part of me is disappointed I will not be getting my hands on a very sweet a6500, but that money was definitely not anywhere close to being in the budget.
I got a tip from a Sony tech support to burn some incense and do a little rain dance and say the known prayers while holding the shutter release button for 30 seconds on my dead camera while the battery and SD card are removed.
That didn’t work.
So I held it for additional 30-40 seconds with the battery in and power back on.
Nothing.
And then I started turning the mode dial to every mode.
S mode. Nothing.
A mode. Nothing.
P mode. Nothing.
IQ+ mode. Wait... It’s focusing now!
IQ mode. Same.
Scene mode. Works.
Pano mode. Works.
Movie mode. Works.
MR mode. Works.
And just like that the camera was back to life.
I have been feeling funny for the past two years about having two very different and incompatible cameras, and I have been quoting articles saying: to get good you need to shoot with one camera and one lens. I somehow always assumed that “the one” was the full-frame Canon 6D. The two and half, almost three, days without the little Sony really showed which is my actual favorite camera I can’t do without. It’s like when they want to figure out whether you should snowboard left or right footed. They push you in the back and whichever foot you put forward to catch yourself from falling is the foot. In other words, it takes an extreme situation to reveal your inner truth. I now have a terrible suspicion I can do without the Canon if it came to that. I have been a Canon guy for 15 years. Ouch.
In the meantime, while I thought the little Sony is dead, and another one is out of reach, and the 6D is not for daily Tookapic’ing, this is the kind of photos I was going to be taking and posting.
Tomorrow: Halloween.
#october #afternoon #monday
