Photo Friday: Picture not-so-perfect

When I said I took endless photographs during the Chicago Architecture Foundation Boat Cruise, I wasn’t kidding.

I was fortunate to take so many shots because, somewhere during the cruise, a huge fleck of dust somehow worked its way on to my camera sensor and into about a quarter of my photos. I discovered this sorry fact when we stopped at a coffee shop after the trip, and we were looking at our photos in our digital cameras’ preview windows.

I could crop out the dust fleck in some cases, which I think sometimes resulted in an improved final version over my original vision.

A few other cases meant marred shots beyond redemption with my meager Lightroom skills.

I was not happy.

Tim thought he’d seen a camera store in the neighborhood during his previous solo wanderings while I was at the TBEX convention, and we found someone who could give us directions to the camera store Tim remembered seeing.

Camera shopping these days seems more a matter of shopping at a large computer store, a large warehouse store or resorting to buying online because your local camera store closed long ago as film cameras became nearly non-existent.

The local camera store we shopped at when we bought our first SLRs (a Canon A-1 in my case, if you were curious), with its knowledgeable sales staff and long narrow store featuring floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with all sorts of cameras, gadgets and film, is long-gone.

But stepping into Central Camera Company in the shadow of the “El” on S. Wabash in downtown Chicago was a little like stepping into a time warp because it felt like one of those classic old, local camera shops.

We’d come to the right place.

A store clerk quickly checked my camera, located the offending piece of dust, pulled a bulb blower that looked a little like a rocket ship off of the shelf, puffed my problem piece of dust away, took a couple of test shots and handed my camera back to me.

He’d actually pulled an air blower from its package to do the job, without expecting us to pay for it. We ended up buying the $16 Giotto’s “rocket-air” blower because it worked much better than the lame rubber ear syringe we’d bought a couple of years ago from a drugstore for the same purpose, and Tim said he’d failed to find the Giotto’s blower around home when he’d looked for it before.

 

Besides, I figure a 110-year-old family business that treats customers right deserves a little support.

So, thanks and happy birthday to Chicago’s oldest camera store, Central Camera Company!

Thanks for Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Comments

[Kymri]

Three cheers for ye olde camera shoppe! I love it!

[Amy @ The Q Family]

That's good that you were able to get it taken care of right away.

[Tim]

It was nice to find a business that has customer service as it's first goal. No wonder they have been in business for so long.

We have only 2 camera stores left here in the Detroit area. All the others have been driven out of business by the Box stores and the Internet -- Sad

[Jen@TwoKidsandaMap]

What a neat find. We have a little shop like that in my town and I hope it never goes out of business. I am glad you were able to get it fixed so you could continue taking pictures. The same thing happened to me once. I am going to have to look into buying that handy tool to add to my camera bag!

[Caitlin]

Gassers on 2nd and Howard St in San Francisco is also excellent! I get all my printing done there (I still shoot with film occasionally).

[jessiev]

how cool!! i love camera shops (not those mall ones, though)...good thing you were checking your photos - and caught the problem.

[Linda]

This is a nice story. Nice to get the word out about good companies.

[marina villatoro]

Hi, That's an incredible picture. And like Tim says, it's really hard to find businesses these days that really care about customer service!

[Dominique]

Kymri-Three cheers indeed!

Amy-I was glad Tim remembered seeing the shop and that someone could tell us where it was.

Tim-I still miss Dunn's.

Jen-we bought the ear syringe I mentioned when I had a similar problem before while traveling. I have no idea how the dust got into the camera as it somehow appeared only on photos taken more than halfway through the trip. Tim thought perhaps the dust got into the camera when I changed the lens before leaving to go on the boat trip...and that static electricity finally attracted it to the sensor mid-trip. We'll never know.
The gizmo we got is a bit bigger than the ear syringe, but does a much better job.

Caitlin-It's been several years since I've shot film. It's difficult to beat the convenience of digital and the freedom to take as many shots as you want without worrying about the expense of printing...but I still miss film.

Jessie-I was so excited about the cruise that I was checking the photos as soon as I had a chance. You don't want to know what I said when I discovered the dust!

Linda-It wasn't the story I originally intended to tell, but it's the one that ended up coming out of my keyboard :)
I must have had it in mind to write the story, though, as I did take a photo of the store. I thought it had a kind of cool, retro look.

Marina-Thanks! I don't do a lot of photo editing, but being forced to crop the photo the way I did made for a better image in my mind. Doesn't hurt that we had a beautiful day and a lot of the buildings are pretty photogenic.

[Reaperducer]

Central Camera rocketh. I go there probably once a month to pick up something or other.

A couple of tips --

- Central is very competitive on price on most products. The raw price isn't as low as B&H, but you don't have to pay shipping.
- Central Camera is NOT very competitive on memory cards. You're better off elsewhere for those.
- Central Camera has a web site and will ship tax-free (and possibly shipping charge-free, I forget) to those of you outside of Illinois.
- If you're in Illinois and you're a professional photographer, you can get in their files and all your purchases are tax-free (think of it as a 10.25% off coupon good for everything in the store).

It's too bad you didn't wander two blocks south -- You would have been at the Prairie Avenue Bookshop, one of America's last architecture-only bookstores. It's in the middle of a going-out-of-business sale as it's shuttering its doors at the end of August because of Chicago's high sales tax. Where else can you buy posters of famous buildings signed by the architects who designed them?

[Dominique]

Reaperducer-Ah, but we did get to the Prairie Avenue Bookshop! I'd read about it somewhere and made it a point to go.
So much great stuff there...I could have spent hours and hours and bought out the whole store. I managed to drop a few bucks there as it was--enough to get the 50 percent off discount.
I only wish I'd had the $$ or the space for some of the signed things I saw up in the rare section.
I'm mulling over doing a post sometime later this year about great indie bookstores closing, and I thought about including a mention of the Prairie bookstore.
One of our indie favorites in Ann Arbor Michigan (Shaman Drum-emphasis on classics, arts, politics) closed a couple of months back.

[Lorraine]

You just kind of want to give those stores a hug, and then have them teach customer service classes to all of the other businesses in the world. Love the storefront shot - 1899!

[Lora]

I LOVE these stories. Very nice shot too! Great find!

[Dominique]

Lorraine-I liked the retro look of the store front and had it in the back of my mind to do a story about it when I took the shot. Wasn't sure how to use it, but it seemed to fit in her nicely :)
It's nice to have a great customer service experience...not so great to think that these experiences seem more and more become the exception, rather than the rule.

Lora-It was definitely a story worth telling. We've lost just about every indie camera store here in the Detroit area.

[Paula]

I'm glad you were able to get the camera fixed. I love the pictures you took. Thanks for sharing.