This started out being a good night and ended a bad night.  I started out going out to shoot some pregame stuff, and I ended up over by the Stanford bench, and asked one of the ball boys who had been with the team the longest.  I was hoping there was a trainer or a assistant coach that had been there a while, like 22 years.  They pointed out a guy on the bench who was happy to talk to me, but he had only been with the team for about 10 years.  But he pointed to me a man sitting at the end of the bench, who was the radio guy for Stanford.  Turns out in the early 80’s he played for the Cardinal.  But, that was too long ago for what I was looking for, but it turned out ok.  He knew a former player, Peter Dukes, you played for Stanford in the late 80’s early 90’s, who I went to high school with at Roosevelt in Seattle.  He also knew a few other players I knew back in Seattle.

I tried something new for this game.  I set up my computer as a wifi hot spot, and then in my 1D MkII I used a Eye-Fi wifi card.  I set it up to transmit only images that I protected in camera.  I tested it out and it seemed to work ok….but I would not know until the game actually started.

I found out very quickly once action started that it was not going to go good.  The Eye-Fi card is just not fast enough to shoot, review, and tag.  I tried most of the time to review and tag during time outs, but then that took me away from shooting anything going on during time outs.  But I would tag an image here, and there.

I knew I was starting to miss shots with trying to tag the photos in my 1D.  I really need to get the Eye-Fi pro card to do this I think….but that might not work either.  When I got back to the media room before halftime, I checked my computer and not one image had transferred over.  Then suddenly, all the images I tagged started to transfer.  That was ok…not as quick as I wanted, but saved me from having to pull my card earlier.

So, I headed out for the second half and my night went from ok to horrible.  All through the second half my Canon 7D was getting an Error 30.  Error 30 is a generic error Canon gave the camera when something goes wrong and it can not tell you exactly what is wrong.  All it said was turn camera off, pull battery, put batter back in and turn camera on.  I would do that, take three shots and it would lock up on me.  Grrrr….  All second half.  So I fell back to just shooting my 1D Mk II.

I suddenly got more worried about my camera than my shooting.  I headed back into the media room earlier than normal, downloaded my images, captioned, edited, and transmitted them, then started looking at my camera to try to figure it out.  Suddenly, it was working fine.  This concerned me even more.

On the way home to Arvada, that was all I could think of….my camera.  What if it died.  It was a super busy time for me, and I really needed the camera for something special I had planned for Sunday’s game.  I pulled the camera out while driving home and rattled off about 200 photos before it started locking up again…  Great.

I sat down and searched google for Canon 7D Error 30 as soon as I got home.  After reading some website postings, it sounded like it was a stuck shutter that happens after using live view.  I use live view from time to time, and actually used it earlier in the game to check my white balance.  So, I took my battery grip off of the camera, and pulled the little lithium back up battery and let the camera sit overnight.  The next day I took the battery to Radio Shack and had it checked, just to be sure it was ok, and it was fine.  So I reinstalled the battery, and before putting the grip back on the camera I installed the battery, put the battery cover on, and held the top of the camera like I was palming a basketball.  Then, per tips on various websites that I trust, I firmly, but not to hard, whacked the bottom of the camera with the palm of my other hand.  I did this twice.  I turned the camera on and rattled off 50 high speed shots, which is supposed to lubricate the shutter so it does not get stuck.  All morning I checked the camera, fast shutter speeds, slow shutter speeds, high fps, medium fps, single shot, everything I could think of and I could not get it to go into error mode.

Thankfully, I shot a basketball game Friday and on Saturday a hockey game with no Error 30, so, hopefully my fix did it.

Oh, Colorado won the game.  Great win for the Buffs after dropping a game to UCLA at home, and then a loss to my Huskies in Seattle.

All of these photos are available for media use only at Cal Sport Media.