This has not been a good two weeks for my gear. My main Nikon body, the D2X started developing a problem with the hot shoe, causing any attached flash to fire sporadically. This started when shooting at the San Diego Comic Con and was one of the main reasons that I used the Sony A700 as my main camera and the A200 as a backup on the Sunday. 

As a member of NPS (Nikon Professional Services) I am entitled to expedited repair service and the camera is now at the Los Angeles Nikon repair center. I hope to have it back soon, and while I have been using the Sony gear a lot this last year while writing the A700 Digital Field Guide and the A200 Digital Field Guide, the Nikon D2X is like an old friend that I miss when it’s not close by.

Then to make matters worse, by MacBook Pro needed to go back to Apple to have the CD/DVD writer replaced. The drive stopped working the day before I was to start on the final edits of the A200 book. And I use the laptop for all my writing. So the laptop went back at Apple and hopefully will be returned by the end of the week.

This last weekend also saw the demise of my last non Drobo backup hard-drive. The Maxtor 1-Touch III drive died on Sunday night and will not be replaced. 

I have been using the new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and so far it is a love / hate relationship. Some of the new features are great, but it seems to run slower especially on my older desktop and has crashed twice while using the new tools. So I am looking forward to any updates from Adobe to see if the little bugs can be ironed out.

***UPDATE

I have just received my MacBook Pro back from Apple with a new SuperDrive in it and after burning and testing a DVD it seems to be working again.