Canon ups and downs (Sunday September 17th, 2006)

category: photography

Above is my new little baby, a Canon 430EX external Flash, which I’d been eyeing up for a while. So far I’ve been practicing around home taking snaps of anything and everything in the automatic mode along with a couple of shots at gigs (I still don’t like flash use at gigs but some venues leave you little option but to snap a couple of pictures with a flash to get a decent shot). More practice required and I’m left wishing that there was a “school of gig photography” that would hire out a dark venue for a day and you could practice and perfect your shooting. They could give the stage up to bands who want to do a bit of rehearsing as long as they don’t object to Flashes going off and people hovering around their toes to try out different angles.

I was reading up on Dan Boud’s Tips for live music / concert photography before heading out last night. I’d decided it was time to try and take control over my camera rather than just adjust ISO and what not. But in the style of all things Niina, my little old 300D must have sensed what I was up to (or perhaps it had seen me enviously reading the new 400Ds specs) as after 5 shots it decided it didn’t want to auto-focus anymore. I took the camera to the loos to get some more light and see if I’d pushed something accidentally but couldn’t see anything wrong. I removed and replaced the battery. Tried the automatic shooting settings thinking the problem might be only with the advanced modes. Each time I pushed the shutter button halfway it would zoom in, zoom back out, remain out of focus and refuse to take the shot. Nothing could coax it to auto-focus.

Thankfully all was not lost as the camera let me take shots after I switched over to manual focus but Spectrum’s darkness and bouncing band members doesn’t make for easy shooting. The results were a little hit-and-miss but I did use the time to play around with the shutterspeed.

Back home I still can’t get to the bottom of the 300Ds broken auto-focus. The problem also occurs with my other lens, with the inbuilt flash, and with the 430ex flash, so it looks to be a problem with the camera body. Google searches haven’t brought up anything similar yet. I really don’t want to have to send it off to Canon for repair again after their shocking customer service last time. And there’s a gig coming up Friday that I want to take pictures at… hrm.