A Somewhat Pricey Click of the Shutter
I am trying not to obsess about it. I really am trying not to obsess about it. Truly. But, my camera broke yesterday. It fell while attached to a tripod from atop a pile of books which were admittedly somewhat haphazardly placed atop a height-adjustable coffee table - one metre max. I was attempting to photograph my CD collection one by one and HAD to get the height just right; attempting perfection, which is truly impossible in this, or any, form of art. The light was admittedly not great, but flat, even and workable; overall decent. It was mostly overcast, which allowed for a soft afternoon light to fill my fifth floor home-office. I snapped a test shot. It looked good, but I needed more height and perhaps better light. Why am I even attempting to photograph my record collection? More books added; these ones not as sturdy as the hefty Language Files 12, which guided me through my first graduate school class.
I added Sociolinguistics and Language Education to the makeshift table, and snapped another test shot. And when I went to adjust the CD on top of the recently purchased Kenwood CD player - BAM! A noise I was not expecting or wanting to hear. Camera down; sprawled on the floor in a most vulnerable position! All is well, I thought; everything still looks intact - screen is still ok, lens not impacted. Phew. But wait, where is the shutter button!? Where in the Sam Snead-Hell is the shutter button! A piece of copper staring up at me through a vacant hole instead of the round shutter release. Panic. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? scream into my conscience. Ok, this really happened. I am aware of this now. My beloved image-producing rectangular box is broken. The sooner I can accept this the sooner I can take some sort of action to try and remedy the situation. Search the floor and make sure you find all the parts. Ok, there is the missing spring. Attempt to put it all back together. Not working. Panic again. Ok, what next? I cycle to the nearest camera store, a place that has kindly fixed my camera before, to get their input on the damage at hand. Turns out, they had never seen such a trauma to a camera before and informed me they unfortunately have no way of repairing it in the store. The only hope is to send it off to a third-party repair shop or perhaps even directly to Fujifilm. I do not catch everything he is explaining to me, but enough to understand that:
a) this could be pricey
b) it may take up to a month
c) there are no guarantees it can be replaced
I take a deep breath and ask the kind salesperson to please send it off for the attempted repair. He takes a quick inventory of all items they are sending: camera body, lens cap, camera strap, battery, and the broken shutter button parts. While waiting for him to process all the paperwork, I browse around the store - all the cameras sort of staring back at me saying things like "we are here if you need us, but we cost a pretty penny, so choose wisely." I see my current camera amongst the crowd - same make, model, color, condition, price. I am tempted to buy it right then and there. Forget asking my wife. I need a camera and I need it now. My identity depends on it. I don't buy the camera, but later check online at home to see if it is still available (obsessing about it), and find out it had been sold that afternoon. Ok, relax. There are plenty more, but not really. They are difficult to find. And expensive. Nearly double the price of what I paid back in 2019. In the meantime, I am trying to find someone or something to blame. Why did this have to happen? I made sure to take the utmost care of this camera - I cleaned it weekly, always kept a lens cap on and secured it in its travel pouch when not in use. Accept. Accept. Accept.
Two weeks pass and I am suffering withdrawals from not being able to make images I want to make. I have my smartphone camera, but it is not quite the same. Not nearly as fun. It just does not react to light and subjects the way I think it should. Ok, I’ll go practice my golf game. Take my mind off of the camera for a while. My smartphone rings while I am practicing a different type of ridiculous shooting and I am greeted with the news from the camera store that since there are no more parts being made for this particular camera, it cannot be fixed. I am again heartbroken, but I accept it. And I can no longer concentrate on hitting that little white ball at arbitrary targets.
I decide to take action as having a camera such as this is important to me, to my vision as a photographer, and helps me to feel calm amidst the storm of craziness this world often has brewing. I notice online that the camera store has the exact same model as mine at one of their shops in Tokyo. I head back to the camera store to retrieve my unusable camera and ask the clerk to have this particular camera sent to Kobe so I can check it out. Two days later it arrives from Tokyo. I withdraw enough cash to pay for it on the spot because if it is in decent shape as the online photographs of it suggest, I will likely buy it. The photographs did not lie, as they often are incapable of doing, and after handing over the cash, I have my camera back. It’s back!
So what did I learn from this ordeal? Well, that this really was not that much of an ordeal. It is something that simply happened. I did not try to break my camera. I was using it to photograph my record collection and it happened to fall, break, and cost me a lot of money and stress in the process. Sure I could have been more careful when propping it on a stack of books. Sure I could have not even bothered taking photos that day. Surely this could have been prevented. But that is not living. And it will not deter me from taking photographs in the future. I just may think twice about using books as a makeshift tripod. Live. Learn. Let go. Move on.
