By Patrick Fulks

6 July 2007

Five days ago, it was five days ago and I was on vacation with my wife and two daughters in St. Louis MO and was having a great time showing them the Zoo and all the wonderful things to see, explore, and of course photograph, when it happened.

We had just entered the butterfly sanctuary which I was anxious to get to as they had so many types of butterflies all right there for you to look at and get some great pictures of. So I grabbed my macro lens and went to take my Nikon D200 off my shoulder when the unthinkable became reality. The strap which I had on my camera was one that had these nifty little "quick release" connectors on it so that when I wanted to put the camera on a flash bracket I could remove the strap easily and it wouldn't get in the way. Great idea huh? Not so much.

As I was saying I went to take the camera off my shoulder when one of the clasps came undone and it fell to the stone floor of the sanctuary where it crashed with a sound that still rings in my head. My heart sank and I felt immediately nauseous as I turned to see my camera on the floor. The plastic view screen cover broken and laying aside, the clear cover over the LCD display laying nearby and the LCD cracked with 1/4 of it solid black. The magnesium alloy case had a crack in it which made me weak in the knees.

I picked up the broken body and held it in my hands. My camera is something very special to me as it has always allowed me to be creative and express myself in some fantastic ways and here it was broken and damaged.

I immediately tried to see the complete extent of the damage and discovered that it would still take pictures but I could no longer get the on/off switch to work. The illumination on the LCD didn't work either. I can no longer switch modes (stuck in manual, which is fine but still sucks) and have trouble changing the ISO at times.

I have no insurance on my equipment that covers breakage and have decided it is time to check into this.

As of this morning I am working out a deal with another photographer friend of mine to rent his camera from him to do any work that comes my way till I can afford to purchase a new camera. This will have to do till then but I can tell its going to be hard as I am already having shutterbug withdrawls......

UPDATE

I have replaced my D200!! YEA! Thanks to everyone that sent comments on this article and those that are about to.

Well, time to go create some new pics for my portfolio....

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