The poppies in the garden were looking especially beautiful today, we had this fascinating pink variety volunteer that crossed itself with the red poppy we already had. Despite the wind blowing them around (making the shooting very difficult!) I got out with my trusty 70D and Sigma 18-38 f/1.8 to capture the colors. I felt around for the best lighting angle, switched to live view and zoomed to max magnification to make sure my focus was perfectly set.
For the first ten or so photos everything seemed normal, I was a little annoyed fighting the wind but I didn't realize how easy I had it at that point. I was just getting dialed in when suddenly this happened:
A mysterious overexposed streak! At first it seemed strange, but I wasn't too concerned. I figured I had let some light bleed in through the viewfinder and I was getting bad reflections from the mirror. I adjusted my form and pressed on.
To my disappointment, every single shot that followed had the same defect. Different exposure settings, different lighting angles, different subjects. I even tried completely blocking the viewfinder with my hand and shooting the ground. WTF I said.
So I came inside and proceeded to google for about an hour, sifting through newbie questions about exposure, metering and the like. Finally I came upon some forum posts where people were experiencing the same bright spots I was. With sample images very similar to mine, the consensus was nearly unanimous: my shutter has finally bit the dust. This appears to be a common flaw with the 70D, for some reason the shutters don't hold up as well as other models. I've had this camera for over 7 years, but I am still well below the estimated 100,000 exposures it's rated for. Unfortunately the warranty is far beyond expired so I am looking at a few hundred USD for the repair. Now I must decide if I will fix it or move on to an 80D which allegedly has a more reliable shutter. So it's back to shooting Ektar 100 on my A-1 for a while. I've been wanting to shoot more film again, so maybe there's a silver lining.
I'll be trying to post some old photos in the downtime, there are so many that never made it into public. Possibly some 35mm negatives that need to be scanned as well, so stay tuned.
So that's how my day went, hope everyone else had a better time than I did! Any of you other photographers drive your gear all the way into the ground? Hop in the comments section and maybe drop an upvote if you feel like contributing to my cause :)