I've just uploaded the final shots that will ever be taken by a classic camera. Okay, classic TO ME, because it was a digital body that I wore the crap out of and is now dead and buried. My Canon 30D shot perhaps hundreds of thousands of frames, was repaired twice, and was already on its last legs from a faulty shutter button when it unexpectedly refused to do anything. I'm sure at the cost of another $300 Canon could possibly shock it back into life but that's $300 that isn't going to help me upgrade to the new hotness. In honour of the old camera, I'm posting these ubiquitous bird shots.

I am pretty ambivalent about birding. I love animals, I love birds, I like taking photos of birds, but there are thousands of photographers who are better than me, who love birds a lot more than me, who use up all of their vacation to go sitting in the muck to shoot birds. Many of them come here to BC to shoot birds and I live here and I shrug my way through opportunities visitors from elsewhere are gobsmacked at.

Incidentally, I did squat in the muck to shoot this fellow. He is one of the resident Great Blue Herons in the very nice park near my apartment in the west side of Vancouver I inhabit now. That place has Kingfishers (I can never get close enough), Purple Martin, Red-winged Black birds, many ducks and ubiquitous Canada Geese. Also, there is a family of beaver that I saw for the first time last night.

But I don't post a lot of bird shots. But damn, my 30D helped me get birding out of my system at times. It had a decent frame rate, it had the controls I wanted, it felt good in my hands. I shot a ton of other types of photography with it. But about two years ago it began to show wear and tear. The shutter problems I've documented and then the great silence.

Goodbye Canon 30D.*

*I've asked my banker if I can afford a 7D. I'll start counting my pennies otherwise. Sigh.