I ventured out this evening to take some nighttime shots of the various buildings on campus and assorted other things I might find interesting. First stop was at one of the libraries. I set up the camera, and in the middle of a set of bracketed long exposures this cop pulls up. He asked me,

"So why you taking pictures?"

"Um, I'm just taking pictures."

"Well people have different reasons for taking pictures."

"Okay...I like to take pictures, and tonight I thought I'd take some pictures of different buildings on campus."

"So is this a hobby of yours?"

"Yeah."

"Well, um, okay then."

During this little exchange the camera also finished doing its dance of three subsequent long exposures. Luckily myself and the cop were out of the shot.

Then, I took the camera off the tripod and moved to turn it off. But the dreaded problem I thought my camera would never have, happened: the command dial that selects the different shooting modes. This was a flaw with the original Canon EOS Elan, and EOS A2 cameras. I figured mine wouldn't have the problem since it's been fine for 8 years. Once the dial breaks, it no longer clicks into position for each of the shooting modes and the LCD display just blinks. No pics to be taken.

Disappointed, I went home. Now I have to decide if I just want to have the camera fixed (~$100), pick up another one on ebay, upgrade to something like an EOS 1n, EOS 1v or EOS 3, sell it on ebay and switch over to digital, yadda yadda yadda. Not what I wanted to have happen. Dangit.

 

R.I.P. camera

 

Time for a new one!

 

If you arent getting it fixed... any ideas whats to do with it? :rick:

 

its the cops fault!

 

It was the night air!!

 

See here's the thing, I've always been rather limited by the price of good autofocus lenses for my camera. Autofocus is nice and everything, but the lenses are freakin ridiculously expensive. So now that mine's broken I'm considering selling my lenses and going back to manual focus.

Tokina makes a very nice 80-200 mm f/2.8 zoom that's pretty common in Nikon AI-S manual focus mount and findable but kind of rare in Canon FD manual focus mount. Either way it can usually be had for under 300 bucks.

Super sharp Canon FD prime lenses can be had ridiculously cheap since old Canons are generally less collectible than old Nikons. A Canon FD 28mm f/2.8 can easily be had for about $100, and a 50mm f/1.4 for like $60. So I'm kinda seriously considering getting a Canon T90 which is kind of like a Canon EOS 1 but made just before the EOS cameras were introduced. It takes the FD manual focus lenses and is pretty sophisticated. It has a few features that my EOS A2 does not have like a magnesium body, multi-spot metering, lighted external LCD display, and flash exposure lock.

It's also missing some features on my EOS A2, a couple of which I use rather frequently. It has no mirror lockup whatsoever. On the A2 I can set a custom function for the self timer button so when the timer is on, pressing the shutter flips up the mirror and fires the shutter two seconds later. T90, no dice. There's a self timer that can be set to either 2 or 10 second delay but no mirror lockup. There's a way to have it "hacked" so to speak, to get mirror lockup, but that solution is rather inelegant. So basically, no mirror lockup, the best that can be done is to set a 2-second self timer and use a wired remote.

Both cameras have similar flash metering system. Where they differ is in how they get proper flash exposures of off-center subjects. On my EOS A2 it has a multi-zone flash metering sensor so I just pick the focus point over the subject and the camera shifts emphasis to that part of the frame. The T90 requires a bit more fiddling: point the center of the frame at the subject, press a button to send out a preflash, then set the flash exposure lock and recompose the scene. Exposure wise they're equally accurate, the multi-zone system is just easier. Coincidentally, Canon reintroduced that flash exposure lock system on their newer EOS cameras, so who knows, maybe it's better.

If I can get past the flash metering thing I could always pick up a Nikon FE2 or FA which are also both very nice and I would get mirror lockup. But again, with Nikon being so collectible there's not really much of a way to get super cheap glass like there is with Canon. Well, cheap, just not quite as cheap. Plus to do multiple exposures without touching the camera between shots I'd need to get an external motor drive since neither of those have built in motorized film advances.

There are plenty of autofocus film camera bodies that would suit my needs, but then I'd have the same old problem of wanting the highest quality lenses but them being far more money than I want to spend.

Hmmm.....

 

That's the reason I can't break away from my Pentax's, first I'd have to get a camera body and lenses right away together, and to get a body that is at least equivalent to the PZ-1 I'd end up spending a small fortune all over again. The PZ-1 has trap shoot capability that's great for catching action through a preset zone, but it doesn't do much for battery life.