On our return home from our visit to Portugal it became obvious that there was something seriously wrong with my prized DSLR as it now refused to read either SD card slot.
I was not even able to format the cards, so the only option left was to take it into our local experts to glean some advice
After inspection by the specialists we were told that the camera would have to be sent away for assessment of damage with a view to a possible repair as there was no obvious cause for the problem.
At this stage I still hadn’t twigged what might have happened and assumed some circuitry malfunction completely out of my hands.
Sending a DSLR to a manufacturer approved camera specialist was never likely to provide a speedy repair as it would need to be sent away assessed followed by an estimate for repair all of which would take time.
I have never been someone you would regard as a patient and the thought of possibly weeks without my camera and even then, with a chance that it could not be repaired at all made me give the situation some serious consideration.
I decided the best plan was to hedge my bets by sending the camera away for repair, but buying a second DSLR so that I could at least continue trapping whilst waiting for a report of the damage.
I reckoned that in the big scheme of things that the camera itself was probably one of the cheaper components to my setup of a DSLR, 100mm macro lens and 1.4x tele-converter.
It made sense to buy the later edition of my damaged camera as It had given excellent results up until its demise and would I be sure that I would up and running on arrival therefore not missing many trapping days.
In fact, my new camera arrived the following day with express delivery, so I only actually missed two days one of which was due to the flight home from abroad.
After a few days I received the report and estimated repair cost of my damaged DSLR.
The cause of the damage was clear in the report and was due to grit getting into the card slots compounded by the disinsertion and reinsertion of cards eventually damaging the circuit board.
Hindsight is a great thing and although my camera and lenses are weatherproofed they are not protected to the ingress of dirt if the cards are removed and replaced outdoors especially in a hot dusty country like Portugal.
My camera dead…. Slain, after all man’s efforts had failed, by the one of the humblest things upon the earth, Grit, Minute, invisible Grit!
The repair and full service was never going to be cheap but a lot less expensive than buying a new camera and would give me the added redundancy now that I had already bought a new one in case of any failures in the future.
When the repair was completed, and the camera returned I was faced with the question of how best to utilise two DSLR’s.
My first thoughts were to use the repaired one for field use and the new one for recording moths from the trap.
This cunning plan was put into practice but only for a short time as will be explained in my next post entitled, It's so much friendlier with two.