The day my camera died.
I had just switched lenses. From the 24mm to the 100mm. Then the battery died, so I switched it with one of the others I was carrying. We were on our fourth day of a nine-day trip, standing on top of the southern-most fourteener, Mount Langley. Before I swapped out the batteries, I snapped this photo.
One of my favorite photos of the North Cascades, on that same climb with K. We had biked from the gate blocking the road to the trailhead, climbed a mountain, descended in the twilight, and biked back down the road by headlamp. Oh, and the day had begun with her knocking on my door at 4:30am. As the saying goes, those who get up insanely early, climb mountains, and bike in the dark together… stay together.
When I went to flip the power back on, it didn't. Come back on, that is. My camera was dead. My first thought: crap, now I'm stuck lugging six-ish pounds of dead-weight for the next five days. Which was about a third of my total pack weight. My next thought: well, I guess I won't have many photos of this trip.
Rewinding three days earlier, my friends Matt, Ben, and I had started about fifty miles south of Langley and the true High Sierra. A dead-end road and a campground, Kennedy Meadows. The scenery looked more like the foothills. Pretty, but not epic.
For our first night's camp, Matt exclaimed upon arriving, 'I have good news and bad news. The good news is there's water. The bad news is there are about a hundred cows taking a shit in it.'
We had stumbled on the South Fork of the Kern River along the Pacific Crest Trail. Indeed, this area has been used for grazing for at least a century. And yes, there was an entire herd of cattle standing in the shallow waters of the mellow stream. We were diligent in double-filtering that night.
Since this isn't really about our trip and is supposed to be about the death of my beloved Canon 5D, I'll skip ahead a bunch. Eventually, we had hiked high enough to reach the crest of the Sierra. Along a ridge north of Olancha Peak (the highest peak south of Langley and, it seemed, for many, many miles in any direction), we were able to peer over the great eastern escarpment of the Sierra to the Owens Valley far below.
Two days later, we were at Cottonwood Meadows and the more or less beginning of the High Sierra. Finally, after seeing the hulk of Langley for the previous thirty-some miles, it was finally close enough to imagine ourselves actually climbing it.
We camped and woke early the next morning to climb New Army Pass and, ultimately, Langley. After a few hours, we stood on top. Whitney, the Sierras, and the massive Owens Valley dominated the view north.
Then my camera died.
***
This was my second Canon 5D. The backup to my first, which already met its untimely demise. Through the miracle of Ebay, last week I was able to (fairly easily, I may add) procure a third. For the remarkably low cost of $150. I have to remind myself when this bad boy was first introduced, it was quite revolutionary. And cost $3500. It's perceived loss in value is now my gain.
While I was Ebay hunting, I decided for fun I'd also pick up a G2 for a whopping $20. According to my camera gear spreadsheet, when I bought my first G2 back in 2006 I paid $200. K was clever in pointing out it lost a '0,' heh.
Not bad. It's in good shape and the off-brand battery it came with seems to be doing great. Here then is my original, a little worse for wear, which I keep high on a bookshelf:
That camera is pretty special. It was my first digital camera, after all. It's not a coincidence I have a collection of 2005-era Canon cameras. There's the G2, then my various 5D bodies, my 20D, an S70, and the granddaddy of them all, my 1Ds-MkII. They're all amazing for the same reason: their CMOS sensors. Of them all, the G2 is maybe the most special.
I grabbed it for a couple of trips this past weekend and was reminded why it's so special. Exhibit A: an unremarkable photo of some cliffs and clouds above the Columbia River. Here it is unedited, straight out of the camera.
And the histogram:
And that's why I love the 2005-era Canon bodies. I took that photo for a reason: it included a dark foreground and a brightly-lit sky. A tough scene for any camera to capture. Sure, sensors nowadays use processing (read: HDR, or High Dynamic Range) to computationally compress the dynamic range. These old Canons, however, do not. They just somehow magically capture high dynamic range like the beauty of a fine art painter. I have no idea how. With a little processing in Lightroom, the highlights are brought back and the shadows opened up.
No filter, no computations. All of four megapixels. And a flip-out screen. I absolutely love it.
Going back through my G2 archives, I find some gems. Like I mentioned, it was my first digital camera. The very first frame, IMG_0001.jpg, is J.
Our first house, complete with an awful lot of shrubbery and lattice.
(Bear in mind that after a lot of work, and a wife, it looked a little different when we sold it a couple of years ago… )
(Back to the G2 archives… ) J biking in our driveway.
Climbing in the North Cascades.
Brilliant light on one of Cosmo's and my annual autumn trips to, uhh, Yose-might.
Mount Rainier with some impressive cloud action on the way home from J's and my first summer holiday.
J, again, at the top of Kearsarge Pass the following summer during our first trip to the Sierras.
Warrior Peak in the Wind River Range on another of Cosmo's and my autumn trips. And the great Cosmo himself on that same trip.
My first solo trip into the Enchantments that would lead to many, many future trips. Culminating, quite beautifully, with Katie's and my wedding next to Perfection Lake. Oh, on that first trip I forgot to check the G2's settings. So I shot every frame as a small JPEG. Oops.
Speaking of my wife, before she was my wife, on our first climb together.
And the painterly feel of the G2's sensor, almost literally. With some processing, of course.
And the final frames shot during a couple of work trips. A photoshoot in Hawaii on the north side of Big Island.
And another to Phoenix, where I took a side trip up to the Grand Canyon to photograph it with a 6x6cm Ciro-Flex camera. And apparently to also photograph myself taking a photo.
There's more to this camera saga, there always will be. Another time. For now, I'm going to enjoy tucking that little G2 in my pocket for bike rides, hikes, trail runs and road trips. The images won't be poster-ready. But, like many from my first G2, some of them will be beautiful.
