Category Archives: Stories

Equipment, Stories

Aarrgg! Broken Camera!

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Last night I joined The Nocturnes for night photography at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Things began in the usual uneventful way – perhaps 40 photographers assembled as Tim Baskerville went over the “rules” of the game, I shot a few photos of the group, and then I headed off to start photographing the interesting shipyard structures under the light of a nearly full moon.

I began by working on improving a shot that I had attempted on another visit, a scene of a brick building with an attached green building in front of a metal roof structure with the power plant smokestack in the background, this time with some very interesting shadows cast by the overhead shipyard structures. Finishing this shot, I set up another of an overhead truss structure illuminated by moonlight with star trails behind. So far so good – and I felt like I was getting in the groove for a productive evening.

I composed a third shot, again with that shadowed wall of the brick building but this time with the base of a giant steel tower in front of it. I pressed the shutter release… and something didn’t sound right. Tried again, and still no go. I took the camera off the tripod and saw the dreaded Canon “err 99” message in the display. No panic, though; I’ve seen this before and know enough to remove the battery, card, and lens and give it another try. Ah, still no go. After removing the lens and jumping through a few other hoops I figured out that the mirror was in the “up” position, more or less waiting for the shutter to open… which it didn’t do.

So, perhaps 15 minutes into this night photography session I had an inoperable camera. I packed up and headed home, where I did a bit of Internet searching and found other descriptions of exactly this issue. It looks like I need to have Canon replace the shutter mechanism.

(I’m going to bring up one odd factor with Canon. It seems that a good percentage of the people who encountered this problem did so after exactly the same sequence of events that I followed in shooting long exposures with mirror lockup engaged. A number had even been using the 24-105 beforehand, as I had been. Hmmm… Later: I’ve been contacted by another photographer who had precisely the same situation and had some dialog with Canon about the situation…)

So, at the moment I’m without a camera. I’m giving some thought to picking up a 5D II a bit ahead of my planned schedule and either keeping the repaired 5D as a backup or selling it. (It would be a good deal for someone, especially with a brand new shutter.) Of course, as luck would have it, it appears that all of the body-only versions of the 5D II that were available last week are now out of stock…

Seems like a good day to take a hike. Without a camera. :-)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Stories

Recipe for a Poor Night’s Sleep

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Reposted from my other blog:

Plan a photography trip to Yosemite Valley. A couple days beforehand, realize that the weather is going to be “interesting” and that camping is not going to be a really wonderful idea. “Upgrade” to a Curry Village “tent cabin, unheated” – hey, it is cheap! Spend Saturday photographing (the wonderful fall colors) in the rain. Check in to your “tent cabin, unheated” and get yourself snug just as the rain starts. The rain increases until it is more or less pouring. The wind begins to rise.

The “tent cabin, unheated” is reasonably snug and dry, but soon you remember news stories about boulders from a rockslide that crashed into Curry Village a few weeks ago, crunching an unoccupied cabin or two. The rain increases. The wind strengthens.

Suddenly there is a loud clap of thunder. Followed by the sound a large rocks and boulders crashing down from the cliffs above.

More thunder. Several times during the night you hear more boulders coming off the cliff. You wonder whether anyone has reconsidered the wisdom of locating Curry Village right beneath this cliff.

Just sayin’.

Stories

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Mosquitos, Too.

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Just back from a few days in the slightly smoky (nothing compared to the rest of California) Yosemite high country in the Young Lakes area. At the moment I’m wading through hundreds of emails that came in while I was gone – so if you emailed me you can expect a reply before too long.

The three Young Lakes are at about 10,000′ and a one day hike in from Tuolumne Meadows in the Yosemite NP. I’ve the area quite a few times in the past, usually in late-August though about mid-October but this is the first time I’ve gotten out there in early July. I was looking forward to photographing a particular panorama of the Cathedral range from a beautiful lupine-filled high meadow where the trail crosses Dingley Creek. It was beautiful, but about a week shy of being “lupine-filled” and the brownish haze floating up from the Central Valley was not quite what I had in mind. Maybe next time!

About those mosquitos… Has anyone else noticed that the intensity of the Sierra wildflower displays is almost perfectly proportional to the density of the mosquitos? Until this trip I had three Really Awful Mosquito stories I used to tell – two from the Sierra and one from The Yukon.

Now I have four. They were awful at the lower Young Lake, which isn’t surprising considering the much of the shoreline is essentially a bog. I spent about 13 hours in my bivy sack the first evening/night to escape them, and the next morning thought I’d see if the middle and upper lakes were better. They weren’t. I finally got a bit of relief by climbing a good distance above the upper lake, but then it was time to descend.

Although photo opportunities were somewhat limited by the smoke, I’m hopeful that I’ll have a few to post from this trip before long.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Locations, Stories

More Alaska Thoughts

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Jim M. Goldstein must be in an Alaska frame of mind this week – I see he posted again on this topic. The more recent post reminded me of a couple of interesting things about Alaska photography, regarding the light in particular – not that there aren’t scores of other things also worth mentioning.

Near the summer solstice the days are extremely long no matter where you are in Alaska. While the daylight is continuous above the arctic circle, even further south it is light almost all the time. The first time I visited I was accompanying a couple of my kids on a week long backpacking trip with a school group. We flew into Juneau and camped at a lake very close to a glacier. (That’s another thing that is different in Alaska – our camp site was within hailing distance of a huge glacier… but we could also send someone down the road a few miles the other way to pick up pizzas. :-) The next morning the kids were trying to figure out if it ever got dark. “I was up at 11:30 and it wasn’t dark. How about you?” “I was up at 1:00 a.m and there was light. Anyone up at midnight?” In the end, while it got “darker,” it never got dark. Later, I was out in Skagway in the middle of the “night” and it was more like dark twilight.

All of this means a couple of interesting things for photographers.

First, you’ll have more shooting time than you can probably handle. When it is light for 21 or 22 hours per day you’ll likely end up completely exhausted if you shoot the way you would at lower latitudes.

(A non-photographic story: We hiked over the Chilcoot Pass one day. We got up at 3:00 a.m., but this wasn’t the problem you might imagine. Sure, it was early, but the sun was already up and it didn’t feel like 3:00 in the morning. We got up, quickly ate and packed, and hiked for hours. I think we crossed the pass sometime in the middle of the morning. After killing a lot of time on the pass we finally headed down the other side, stopping along the way for lunch and general trailside stuff. We finally encountered one of the camping huts on the Canadian side and pause there for awhile. We moved on and arrived at our intended camp near a lake. We began to set up but were informed by a Canadian ranger than his “clients” would need our campsites. Hmmm. We went ahead and spent a couple hours more here fixing dinner, repacked, and headed on down the trail 3 or 4 more miles to another campsite. Here we finally set up camp and I recall finally finishing my day at 10:00 p.m…. with the sun still in the sky!)

Second… what amazing light! While the days are very long, the sun never gets all that high in the sky. The sun doesn’t “rise” as much as “rotate” around you. Consequently “golden hour” light goes on and on and on for hours and hours. Perhaps “drunk on light” might describe your reaction to this.

Finally, an illustrative story from a conversation I had at Beaver Creek near the Yukon/Alaska border. We had come in late in the day after riding through scattered thunder showers. Rather than camp we decided to get “hostel” rooms. In the evening we were hanging out in the lodge and I remember asking one of the locals about the weather. The answer was, more or less, “thundershowers in the evening, but the sun should be out by midnight.” He was right – the sun came out at about 11:30.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.