camera miracles: once, not twice!

As I mentioned in a post last February, I almost lost my (Nikon Coolpix L26) camera to the cloaca maxima, in Roma. It however remained (miraculously) within reach inside the manhole there… Well, this kind of miracle does not happen twice (or only in Roma…)  and I have now lost the camera for good! When climbing Tower Ridge, after the first belay to go up Douglas gap, I took it out of my pocket to take a few pictures of the beginning of the ridge and of the fantastic view of that side of Ben Nevis. As I was mostly paying attention to Kenny going up the blocks above us (to make sure of my holds there), I did not look as I put my camera back inside my overpants and it slid out of the pocket, swiftly accelerating down the snowy slopes to disappear into Coire na Ciste… There was no way we were going to check whether or not it was retrievable, so I called myself a few well-chosen names and we continued our climb along the ridge without further delay. In fact, I had another camera in my bag, my older and bulkier Konica Minolta Dimage Z20, but it was impossible to get hold of it in most places (as I would have had to unpack) and it anyway ran out of battery (which explains why I have so few pictures of the top of the Ben and of the unbelievable [and rare] views of the Highlands invading the ‘Og in the past days!).

Here is thus the last picture taken from my lost camera, a view of the Aonach Eagach ridge from the bottom of Glencoe (and the start of the trail to the Lost Valley). Apart from this miracle in Roma, I have been rather unlucky with cameras lately, loosing first my favourite one in a New York taxi, then this one on Tower Ridge. Actually, I consoled myself with the fact that the quality of this Nikon Coolpix L26 camera was rather unsatisfactory, behaving poorly in anything but clear weather and having grown a mark (fungus?) on the lens (after falling in the snow during my X’mas ski trip). Mark that is clearly visible on the right of  the ptarmigan picture below. Anyway, I will now have to look for a new camera, hopefully supported by ‘Og’s readers (!) via the links to Amazon.com and Amazon.fr there, which earn me a monetary gain [of 4% to 7%] if a purchase [of any product] is made within the 24 hours following the entry on Amazon through this link, thanks to the “Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com/fr“.

t’was a dark and stormy night

As the announced storm broke on top of my house, my daughter and I rushed to our cameras and tried to catch a few lightning strikes. I found a option on my old Konica that would keep its aperture open for 4 seconds and by clicking continuously I managed to catch a few chance pictures… out of the 200 or so tries.