My digital is dead

[sf]

My D70 died yesterday. It was relatively new too. It just stopped working. Something mechanical wrong with the mirror box, or so they say at Samy's. It will cost as much to fix it as to buy a decent digital P&S - but I will fix it because I will - just because. He says, the average cost is around $300, but that means at least 50% more.

So, thanks to the puny build of the D70, my RF645 will be my only camera when I go to Europe on Sunday- which is a good thing in every respect except for the costs of film. My whimsical shooting will now consume $$$ through the RF. So I bought 12 rolls of film - some PanF, some HP5, and some Delta 3200. No color, because I can print my B&W at home, optically, the old way.

5 weeks for an estimate, says SAmy's, then another couple of weeks to 5 weeks to get the camera back in my hands. That means I will have forgotten digital, and the RF645, through the apparent will of the camera Gods, will earn film photography its place once again.

Bottom line - never trust a digital camera. To the guy that sold me that D70 - I only used it for about 1200 shots, and it died. Thanks. When the D70 returns, I'm selling it and buying a REAL camera.

Maybe this is what I needed - a force of nature to restore the supremacy of film in my daily photographic endeavors.

 

[Trius]

Don't you understand that ALL digitals are dead?

Yours in Luddite Love,

Earl

 

[sf]

what is Luddite Love?

My ex-girlfriend's room-mate called herself this, and I've heard some people on this forum use the term.

 

[Frank Granovski]

My D70 died yesterday. It was relatively new too. It just stopped working.

Haha! You should have bought a Canon 20D, but now you have the excuse to buy the 5D. 😎

 

[sf]

uh, no, I have an excuse to NOT buy a digital next time i have $$$$ for cameras. No more DSLRs for me. Maybe a little P&S for posting pics to RFF and the auction site, but film for me. That's it. I don't like my cameras acting like computers, all fussy and unstable.

And, I am a Nikon guy, anyway. Though I will concede Canon's superiority in some aspects if design.

My next purchase will be either an M3, an MP, or an Xpan. Most likely an M3. I am considering the M3 that someone here has for sale, but don't have the money for it right now (especially with the digital in the shop and promising to suck $$$ from my wallet.

I feel clean anyway. Like I've just cleansed myself of digital. Nice feeling.

 

[Kyle]

Have you tried selling it on www.fredmiranda.com? Every now and then someone puts up a WTB ad for a broken DSLR, and usually they never get what they want. There is a chance it would be financially better to sell it as is rather than pay to have it fixed and then sell it.

 

[sf]

too late - I think. I may call Samy's tomorrow and take it back. You may be right - since the D50 with kit lens sells for 750 USD at Costco here in Los Angeles. If I sell my D70 now for 350 USD, it would be the same as selling it for 700.

Good point.

 

[Uncle Bill]

Sorry to hear about the dead D70, I have come to the conclusion that DSLR's have to be the most expensive disposible cameras on the market. I agree on getting an M3 they never break.

Bill

 

[bmattock]

uh, no, I have an excuse to NOT buy a digital next time i have $$$$ for cameras. No more DSLRs for me. Maybe a little P&S for posting pics to RFF and the auction site, but film for me. That's it. I don't like my cameras acting like computers, all fussy and unstable.

And, I am a Nikon guy, anyway. Though I will concede Canon's superiority in some aspects if design.

My next purchase will be either an M3, an MP, or an Xpan. Most likely an M3. I am considering the M3 that someone here has for sale, but don't have the money for it right now (especially with the digital in the shop and promising to suck $$$ from my wallet.

I feel clean anyway. Like I've just cleansed myself of digital. Nice feeling.

I'm sorry your DSLR died, that is a shame. The D70 is by most accounts an excellent camera. And of course you should buy what you like and use what you want, whether it be film or digital.

I do note with a trace (but only a trace) of irony that you said there was something mechanical wrong with the camera. Could have happened to any SLR, yes?

I got *into* digital because my Minolta X-9 (X370 clone) had a meltdown at a most inconvenient moment which led me to a) buy digital PnS to record my travels (I was a road warror then) and b) buy a MECHANICAL camera that did not depend on electricity. Not that it was film (although of course it was), but that it had no battery in it.

I'm a Canon guy, but I like Nikons too, I just got a Canon first and built an FD-lens system around it. The important thing was that the battery only powered the meter. If you press the shutter release, it goes off. And that was the important bit for me.

Still, cameras break. Digital and film. Some sooner than others, and newer tend to be less well made than older. But that's not a facet of the capture device, I think; that's a facet of the lousy manufacturing that goes along with planned 1-year obsolescence (ok, you can blame that on digital).

However, in defense of digital. I shot holiday photos for some clients Wednesday night. They had their photos the next day. Shot for more clients on Thursday, they had their photos today. I got two referrals, so I have to do some more holiday shots next week. I have a day job, I could not keep up this pace if I were dropping film off to be developed, scanning negs, removing scratches and dust, etc. With my Pentax *ist DS, I'm up to just under 6,000 frames since purchase in July. Best money I ever spent.

And, to keep things balanced, I just sold six prints of a gallery 11x14 B&W shot that I took with a 1964 Canon FX and a 58mm f1.2 FL mount lens.

So maybe things just are what they are. But I'm still sorry that your camera broke, that would tick me off too.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[Poptart]

I sympathize. But my F3 shutter readout has been inventing its own numbers since the late '80s--and similarly, you have to replace the entire LSIC harness to repair it, so I haven't.

 

[Poptart]

Nedd Ludd was a British guy who organized an attack against the machines of the new industrialization.

 

[ywenz]

Your D70 dying has nothing to do with it being a digital camera. You said it yourself, it was the mirror that suffered a failure. (Same type of mechical failure you would expect, if you accidentally dropped your M3 and knocked out alignment of the RF system) D70 a lower priced DSLR, hence you would expect Nikon to cut corners somewhere - in your case, it was the build quality of the mirror system. My 4 years old Canon D30 DSLR was still going strong until I sold it on ebay. Surely, the Digital Hasselblad H1 is a *real* camera? As real as the Hassey Xpan?

 

[ch1]

Nedd Ludd was a British guy who organized an attack against the machines of the new industrialization.

Correct-a-mondo.

To elaborate a bit, Ludd, and his adherents, known as Luddites (circa 1820's Britain), recognized that the development of machine-production would reduce "artisans" to "workers".

They were essentially "romantics" and were doomed to lose their greater fight because the "new" mechanization was much more economically efficient.

Mechanized production enabled the new capitalist class to manufacture standardized goods to much larger markets. [As an aside: The production the Luddites opposed at that time was the mechanized milling of cotton cloth This enabled the middle classes to enjoy the softer clothing of cotton versus flax-based hand loomed cloth. It also allied the British cloth manufacturers with the slave-owning cotton plantation economy of the pre-Civil War U.S. South.]

Today, we would more likely use the term "Retro" to describe a "Luddite" (i.e. someone who values an older, less technological approach to a given task).

Too bad about your DSLR - but I do not think that the Luddites will win this battle either. Yet, you can also still find hand-loomed cloth (at a price) so all is not lost either!

 

[brightsky]

What bad news right before a trip.

My first thought is that you were lucky it broke BEFORE you left, not during your trip when it would have been even more traumatic.

I think with a digital it may be best to buy new, or nearly so, just for the warranty.

 

[david b]

Such bad news. Sorry to hear about it. Wanna buy an xpan?

 

[wlewisiii]

Correct-a-mondo.
Too bad about your DSLR - but I do not think that the Luddites will win this battle either. Yet, you can also still find hand-loomed cloth (at a price) so all is not lost either!

That last bit is the real key and why I still hope to live to 90+ while still shooting film 50 years from now. No, Kodak will be a memory and probably Ilford too, though there is real hope for them. But there will be much smaller companies (yes, I do believe more than one) trying to fill the niche for artists interested in silver halides suspended in gelatin... Just as you can currently find a good tube of Titanium White with a small bit of searching you will be able to find someone's clone of Plus-X someday. And even if that isn't true, well, the chemicals needed for dry plates are still for sale 😱

William

 

[ch1]

That last bit is the real key and why I still hope to live to 90+ while still shooting film 50 years from now. No, Kodak will be a memory and probably Ilford too, though there is real hope for them. But there will be much smaller companies (yes, I do believe more than one) trying to fill the niche for artists interested in silver halides suspended in gelatin... Just as you can currently find a good tube of Titanium White with a small bit of searching you will be able to find someone's clone of Plus-X someday. And even if that isn't true, well, the chemicals needed for dry plates are still for sale 😱

William

Agreed - wholeheartedly.

And in this situation, tech progress (in the name of the Web) is our friend. E-tailing empowers niche producers of specialty goods to find niche buyers at a sufficient economy of scale to ensure survival. Film (and related services such as developing) will increasingly become such a "niche market".

The Web continues to evolve and change the economy.

Ten to twenty years from now we may well be reading about the decline of W-Mart and other big box retailers as even their, more moderate class, customers move to the Web for purchasing goods at lower prices.

 

[Jason_K]

Nikon had a service advisory out on the D70 recently:

http://robgalbraith.com/public_files/D2H_D70_N55_Service_Advisory.pdf

However your problem doesn't sound like the issue in the advisory which is unfortunate because Nikon would have fixed it for free.
The D2H had problems as well - I had to send in one of mine from work due to a failed meter.
I heard some folks complain about Canon products too, although I personally have never had issues with my Canon gear.

Bottom line is that they just don't make things like they used to. It seems good quality control went the way of the dodo in exchange for quick gratification by companies who are only rushing to get out the next hot product and consumers who are all to happy to take whatever they get.

 

[Andy K]

Sell the D70 and replace it with an FM3a. Welcome back to film.

Andy, happy to be a Luddite. 🙂

 

[franceluxemburg]

From what i read in my french photo magazine Chasseur d'Image
the mirror failure is the main case of failure on low-end SLR & DSLR
Of course you can not have a winding failure on DSLR :bang:
Low end are supposed to go up to 50 thousand exposures
when high-end go to 250/500 thousand exposures :angel: