Shown above is my favourite combination for out-and-about photographing. The Canon EOS 30 with the 40mm STM pancake lens. I’ve written about it many times, it’s merits and shown loads of photo’s – it’s a great camera. The large finder and critically the focusable viewfinder, seal the deal. Unfortunately mine seems to have developed a fault that is not correctable or worth repairing!
I’d been happy shooting the camera. I was away for a week, been using it all week, on the last day I noticed that the “bracketing setting” had gone wrong. What do I mean by that? Well – as you look at the camera above, the LCD panel show’s 2, I’m on my second exposure on the roll – fine. To the right, there is a list of options. By pressing the “function” button on the back of the camera, one can go up and down and select the function one wishes to use. For example, this trip I was using bulk loaded Delta 100, so each time I put a roll in, the DX coding read the cassette, lets say 400 ISO, but I knew there was 100 ISO in, so manually changed it! The bottom function is auto bracketing. To my knowledge I’ve never used it! What it does when activated, is make one exposure at the “correct” exposure, then one either side, as the operator has set. In other words 1 or 2 or 1.5 stops. Trouble is mine has jumped it’s 0 point, from 0 to +2! So below left is what it should look like – below right is my tinkering to show what it now looks like!
OK so far? So what’s the issue if I never use this! First of all I can’t shift it. I’ve pressed every button, re-set by removing the battery, googled ect, and it won’t budge. The bigger problem is that it seems to be affecting the entire exposure system. P (Program Mode) gives me one reading which is way off, the “Green Auto” mode gives me a completely different reading. Both different from my separate light meter, I’ve since checked it with! Even if I were to use that, and set manual, at this point, I’d have no confidence that it’s actually firing at what I’ve set.
Worse, 11 rolls of film exposed, and 12th in! When did it go wrong??
The good news – (for Star Wars/Yoda fans) “I have another”! I’ve swapped out the batteries, the lens, the eyecup and I’m go again. I’ve now developed all 12 rolls, they were all fine, except the last that is indeed all over the place, but mostly salvageable. Seems I did notice right away!
Why it went wrong so suddenly with no signs or why it seems to have messed up the entire exposure system, I have no idea. I haven’t dumped it yet, in case a “Google Fix” turns up out of the blue, but I’ve been down the current list so far! Sooner or later it was going to happen that I’d get to the end of a cameras life, but thus far I’ve been lucky – very lucky. This is my first “camera down” moment!
S.H.O.U.T. 