& Wedding photographer became unglued….

Maybe I should say that my Sony DSLR camera mirror got unglued during the last weekend while I was shooting a wedding at the White Chapel Estate in North Richland Hills, TX and it was really a no issue at all.

As a professional wedding photographer I have had my fair share of equipment malfunctions and mishaps during the last couple of years, but this one was a new one for me.

While I was taking the formal group portraits of the families and the wedding party, my camera view finder got completely dark, I thought for a second that I had engaged the mirror lock up or bumped some settings, but I realized very quickly that the camera had malfunctioned. It was now time to put my back up camera to work, I don't think the party noticed that something went wrong when I had to change the camera body, so I was back in business in an instant! This is why professional wedding photographers carry back up equipment. It’s just a matter of time before a piece of your equipment decides to "take a break". I can't understand how some "budget photographers" shoots weddings with only one camera and flash, what a foolish and an irresponsible gamble!

Now I have to send in my camera to Sony for repair in a hurry and get it back in time for next wedding. I never shoot a wedding without at least 3 camera bodies, 3 flashes, several lenses and countless of backups. Call me paranoid but I have learned from experience and from my former job as an airline pilot to always plan for worst case scenarios and have a solid back up plan if "something hits the fan", so to speak.

Below you can see how the camera mirror has separated from the mirror box, it's only attached with a few points of glue, doesn't seem to me a like a very solid solution for a pro camera, but it's not only Sony that has this kind of problems, the Canon 5D Mark II has been recalled in the past for this type of problem, I guess it's a cost cutting issue.

I was tempted to glue it back myself and save some serious time and "mula", but I will leave it to the Sony repair center to use the right glue, adjustments and cleaning equipment to get it done right.