Unsettled Calm During The Storm

...I can’t tell you why this morning was rough.

What I can tell you is that in the middle of Cat Five hurricane, Jacob calls me up and says, “I need you in Liberty Hill.”

Decisions, decisions.

Once I got the situation down to a Cat Two and with Lucy’s permission, I jetted off to Liberty Hill to help with loading a POD.

Sometimes, what feels right in your gut, doesn’t feel right in your heart. And that’s all I can say about this morning.

Beside me was my Sony RX100 Mach 7 (M7), without a card. Before the Cat 5 blew in, I was hoping to stop at Walmart and get myself a new SD Card so I could start using the M7 again. Alas.

When I got to the job, Oris and Winston were almost midway into the loading the POD. Our customer had a lot of old boxes that wouldn’t stack well sprawled all over the house, plus solo pieces of furniture that didn’t look like they’d fit in the sixteen foot POD.

Well, thank God, Oris stacked it high and tight and we had room to spare. Just like the customer ordered.

Jacob wasn’t having a good morning either and his pack and load wasn’t going as planned so he asked us to meet him at the unload.

Oris, Winston, and I joined him, and we unloaded his sixteen foot trailer in no time, the only problem was that most of the customer’s stuff won’t fit in the room he was moving into. Our client wasn’t interested in keeping the stuff, so we’d either have to donate what was left or junk it.

It was nice to work, since he kept my mind off the home front, but once the work ended, my thoughts returned to the situation at home.

So I picked up some lunch and came home and the house seemed none-the-worse for wear. Which was a good thing.

Turns out, it was a fast storm and moved out as quickly as it came in.

Scheduled some jobs and did another post and well, that was my work day.

But, I did stop by Best Buy and picked up a new SD card. My M7 is ready to roll, but in using it, I’m finding that one of the dials is a tad harder to move than I remembered it.

Let me explain --

A couple of years ago, while Jerry was over, he told me of a project he was working on of digitizing some of his family’s old photographs. He was using a scanner, but wanted to digitize some of his photos by photographing them. I forget why, but I suggested his use M7 since I wasn’t using at much.

And I totally forgot I’d lent Jerry my M7.

A couple of days ago, I was watching some YouTube video and the guy said, what you really need is a full frame camera with one or two lens, and a small portable compact camera.

Well, I got my Sony A7 IV with a 50mm and Tameron 70 to 200mm lens. So technically, I had everything this guy was suggesting.

Except that I didn’t know where my M7 was at the time. I started looking around my office and my house and couldn’t find it. *Damn*.

Maybe I left it in some pocket somewhere or in my car. Nope, nothing.

Well, maybe I gave it to somebody. In recent years I did give away my Cannon SL2, so maybe I gave my M7 away.

Which would’ve been strange, because the M7 is/was a sixteen hundred dollar camera. I’d like to think I’m a generous guy, but sixteen hundred dollar generous. Yikes.

On a lark, I texted Jerry and sure enough, he had it.

Whew.

So when I met with Jerry last night, he brought back to me, and sure enough, it still works.

I have in my mind to do a post on the M7, but we’ll see.

Here’s the thing, as much as I love my A7 IV, and would love for it to be my everyday carry, it’s just too damn bulky for that. I want something smaller.

And well, the M7 fits the bill perfectly, for the exception that it doesn’t have an ND filer, for video. Had the brain trust at Sony figured out how to put an ND filter on that bad boy, I think it would been the “perfect camera” if such a thing exists.

So now, I need to relearn on how to use the M7 again. It still has the old settings, but I need to re-develop that muscle memory.

I do remember enjoying using it, but at a certain point, I knew I need to upgrade to the A7 IV. I was fortunate enough at the time to be able to a) afford an M7 in the first place and b) upgrade when the time came.

All this to say is that as of now, despite the dial being a little jammed, I’m all good in terms of equipment to accomplish the goals I want to do with both photography and video, except for one thing:

What the hell is my story and what’s worth photographing?