Yesterday, in some unexpected intermittent sunshine, we decided to go and visit a new dragonfly location relatively close to home, Flitton Moor in Bedfordshire. It doesn’t look much like a moor but what the hell, that’s its name. There was quite an array of species flitting about in off and on sun but there weren’t any really good photo opportunities so we restricted ourselves to identification snaps.
Hawk-eyes had spotted a settled Hawker and I was anxious to confirm (or otherwise) that it was a Southern Hawker. Unfortunately, though Carol had seen it land high up in a tree, I couldn’t actually see at first myself. Carol snagged a shot and offered to try with my gear, just because the lens is a little longer. “Click, click” – it was on high speed burst. No matter, it’s only pixels and not a waste of film. That’s one of the beauties of the digital format. Carol handed back my camera.
With further patient explanation from Carol, I finally managed to locate the beast in question still sitting calmly high up in the tree. I thought I’d try a monopod-assisted shot myself. Problem! The little control wheel that should adjust the aperture setting was not changing the aperture setting. Neither was the bigger wheel that should adjust the exposure compensation adjusting the exposure compensation. Everything appeared to be stuck as it was; nothing was adjustable. I switched the camera from aperture priority to manual and tried again. No joy.
Having very recently returned a Canon EOS 7D in favour of my “trusty” old Canon EOS 40D which now appeared to be completely stuffed, I began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I turned the camera off and back on. Still no joy.
My sinking feeling hit rock bottom. This appeared to have the makings of a seriously embarrassing event.
For some reason, let’s call it inspiration, although the camera’s on/off switch hadn’t fixed anything, I tried removing the camera battery and reinserting it. Bingo, all systems now appeared normal. A hard reboot seemed to do the trick.
Maybe Canon software is related to Microsoft?
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