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. :-)