Boating the Salish Sea and Camera Guts

For this week, we've been divided up into two groups for a series of boat trips. I got to go out today with Shad, Elizabeth and Umi to learn how to use the ROV  (Remotely Operated Vehicle, which is able to send live video back to the boat and attached to a 100ft cable.)We explored a muddy bottom, where we brushed up against a forest of fluttering sea pens, and a rocky bottom with urchins, sea cucumbers and a rock fish.

It was a great day for boating around Fidalgo and Whidbey islands. We went under Deception Pass as well. It was amazing how swift the waters get in the area, especially flowing past the pillar of rock in the center of the pass.

I also took my first picture today. Not really, but it was the first real one for my project. I found Kailey - who just happens to be my roommate - looking through oyster shells on the grass with her adviser. They're searching for baby native oysters to see how the population is doing. Not too good it seems. About 5 per 100 shells.

The shells were so beautiful and textured on the lawn, I decided it was time to start work. I carried around that 4x5 camera all day anyways. After a lot of fiddling with focus buried under my jacket to block the sun, I took my shot. I'm using my SLR as a light meter, so lets hope everything exposed properly.

 A bunch of us finished a puzzle we started yesterday too, which is shaped like a penguin. Great success!


And now, the following is a tragic story that may be lost on anyone who isn't camera nerdy:

I had an unfortunate event today. After a series of not being able to get my lens to retract back into the body of my camera (it fold up compactly, as it is a bellows camera. Photos of the beast soon.) I walked inside to get a table to work on. Umi helped me realize that the track my lens slides on had just gotten misaligned from having the bellows out so far, so we got it back into place just fine.

But in the process of things being in strange positions, there was a small metal pin that a plastic bit fell off of, and as a poked to investigate, the pin sprung out of it's hole, rapidly emptying ball bearings and metal bits all over the table.

It was horrifying.

What are these guts to my poor camera and how could they just go everywhere like that. After investigating the body and me feeling a bit sick, we realized that these parts from a long flexible chain of sorts that moves the rangefinder. This is an alternative way of focusing after a single sheet of film is loaded an you can no longer look through the back of the camera. Which is of course inoperable now, with nothing to reach the mechanisms.

We shoveled the remains in the tupperware from Umi's lunch (there might be honey on a few bearings now..) and they're now sitting on my windowsill in a film canister.

It's not the end of the world, it will just be a very delicate repair process. Potential for ball bearing loss, high.