One image of six Nikon sent me. I had figured the salt likely did the camera in, but when the repair estimate came at $392.00, I felt complete relief. I don't know, I guess naivete spares one from fear and anxiety. Maybe that's the typical price of a freshwater dunking. I've read that water does not harm electronics, only an electrical short does. Since a Nikon D850 is always on to some degree with a battery in it, I figured maybe it didn't start--after silicone sucked all the water out--because of a minor short. At best, we would have taken the camera immediately to UPS on the Keys and sent it to Nikon. If it was still wet when it got there, maybe less chance would have existed that corrosion would have set in. Could Matt have attached his laptop to a printer at the public library there, for the label Nikon provides? Probably not, but we could have phoned Nikon for further advice.
Hindsight.
The camera beyond economical repair, I believe Nikon is offering me a refurbished D850. I'm not sure what I will do yet, but I feel completely unwilling to compromise on the model. Had I found a refurbished D850 a year ago, when I bought this one brand new at over $3500.00 with tax, I would have bought that for sure. I was so nervous about what value I was getting at such high price. And it took me about six months before I comfortably felt I had chosen well.
It's not just a matter of being "serious" about photography. I have friends on FB who shoot amazing shots with lesser cameras, and who go afield more often than I do, people who I tend to think of as better photographers. When I really get down to it, it's what I told Fred Matero before I bought the camera, that I get turned on by images I create. What I could do with my D7100 far excelled what I could do my D60. Enough use of my D850, and I felt the same way about it in relation to my D7100. I'm just looking for subtlety in some of my images--most of them don't please me--that turns me on. If I were a heavy smoker, I could easily spend the cost of a new D850 in a year, just to feel that meditative glow. (Or worse, not feel anything but relief.)
You crave results. Once you know a little of what you can do with a D850, you don't go back. That's not to say I no longer appreciate results I got with my Pentax K1000 manual 35mm camera. I even appreciate results I got with throw away cameras, which I used after my third Pentax camera got ripped off, before I could afford my fourth. (The first two got ripped off also.) But once you get the better drug, my experience suggests, you can't get the satisfaction you crave again from lesser. You admire the better shots of the lesser, but what you're after--that counts.
Do I ever feel nostalgia for simpler days, simpler means? Yes. But I get over it.
Mirrorless cameras, by indications I gather, may fairly soon replace on the market brand new DSLR cameras like the Nikon D850. I could go with Nikon's latest now. Tests indicate it has more dynamic range, which means the color is better. But it's not only cost when it comes to lenses and the added cost for the camera itself that turns me off.
Let me explain the lens cost first. The lens I lost when the kayak tipped is, by all indications, useless now. I haven't yet taken it out of the airtight box with silicone, but surely salt did it in. It's an excellent lens. I paid only $80.00 for it used, because it is a dated model from 1985, when it then cost $950.00. In today's dollars, a hell of a lot. The lens is as sharp or sharper than some recent models. It won't work on a mirrorless. I would have to shell out plenty more for 50mm. But as I say, not only is cost prohibitive. Recent DSLR lenses, like all of the others I own, will work on a mirrorless only by use of an attachment, and that just doesn't feel right. It's gimmicky. Besides, the attachment costs more money yet.
When I really get down to it, I'm just not yet ready for the better drug. It's even questionable if the drug itself is safe yet, because this new type of camera is still experimental, by which I mean Nikon is producing new models quickly in an effort to get one right.
If I ever make a lot of money, I'll surely go mirrorless. And use lenses made for the camera, a big expense. I am looking for monetary results from photography, but casually so, as there is little, if any, real hope that I can gain earnings of much gainsay. It's about my personal pleasure. Magazines do like excellent images. I'm not saying it doesn't help. But no one earns much from magazines, unless they can afford to quit the day job and freelance full time, the sort of career that's always rubbed me the wrong way, because I want to create art from words, not just get every magazine assignment of many sorts I can fill on a full-time basis.
When I went on FB in 2011, I sent Jim Hutchinson, then the former managing editor at The Fisherman, a personal message with my friend request. "I remember you," he said, "because I never had to edit a word you wrote."
