This was one of those weekends where I practically lived with a camera in my hand; I took around 500 halloween pictures yesterday and then moved on to Christmas-card pictures of the kids today. Everything was going well enough until late in the day, when I was trying to get a nice black and white shot of my son. In the middle of shooting I took a quick peek at my camera’s LCD display and noticed that the last shot had been completely underexposed. So I scrolled back a few shots and discovered that I’d been shooting nothing but black frames for about 30 seconds. One second it worked, the next it didn’t. All of the camera settings were the same–same aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. Same light. But no picture.

I double-checked things, but I was still getting nothing but black. With a sinking feeling, I popped the lens off and took a multi-second exposure while staring into the camera. I could see the mirror flip up, but instead of seeing the sensor, I was left staring at a closed shutter, which strongly suggests that my shutter has died. The shutter on my D60 is rated for 30,000 exposures, and I think I’m around 25,000 right now, so it’s a bit earlier then normal, but not utterly unexpected.

So, I guess I’ll be packing it up and shipping it off to Canon for service this week. I’m not sure how long it’ll take to get back, but I was hoping to use it at Mind Camp next weekend. It looks like I’m going to have to make alternate plans.