Dear Tourists, give me your overpriced cameras

Today I had what I am assuming is a typical friday at the Fitzhugh, because this is how it's gone every Friday I've worked so far: everyone I'm supposed to be interviewing for the week's stories, skips town and I have endless conversations with people's voicemail. Then I get fed up and go wandering around for stand-alone photos.

Today I was on one of those wanders, only I actually had an event. It was a barbecue for the victims of the recent explosion at the Pyramid Riding Stables. I headed down there, and the town's mascot Jasper the Bear was wandering around trying to get people to go grab a burger. So I took my shots, got the names I needed and headed off in search of Jasper. He was giving high fives to kids and whatnot, I thought it would be a good photo. So I finally found Jasper, almost back at the office and I began lining up my shot when -- some tourists that do not speak english start swarming me and pointing frantically at their very similar (but more expensive and better) Canon DSLR with at least a 70-200 mm lens on it. They were literally blocking my shot now so I had to attend to the group now that they were pointing and trying their best to spit out in English: "How do we turn the flash on?"

Now, I may not be an expert, but I'll tell you what I was shooting on. First of all I was in manual, shooting at about 1/2500 to 1/3200 of a second, depending on whether the clouds were covering the sun or not. My ISO was at 400. What this means, is that THE FREAKING SUN WAS OUT. So these tourists, were attempting to shoot in auto on this very expensive camera with the flash out, in + 26 C weather with the sun shining down on us. Now, I'll admit, it was a bit smokey because of the wildfires in Kamloops, but the bottom line is, when you're outside, you don't need a fucking flash, unless it's dark out or you are, I don't know, shooting a fashion portrait.

So I tried to explain to these women how to put the flash up anyway, I figured with them speaking whatever language it was, I wouldn't get very far with my five-minute photography lesson. It turns out the camera was infact broken. I demonstrated on my camera, which opens the flash with the same button on the left hand side of the camera body, below the pop-up flash. I switched my camera to auto, and showed it pop up, and they couldn't figure it out, so I tried to slowly say, "It's broken," while pointing to the flash. They didn't understand, but one lady dug her nail under the flash and it popped up. They thanked me in broken english and wandered off.

It was at this point that I realized Jasper the Bear was about 100 metres down the street. Thanks guys.

I was so frustrated by this event, because here I am shooting with my barely newsprint-worthy lens, and these tourists can afford these crazy expensive cameras, and they haven't even bothered to read the first page of their instruction manual.

This makes me drool.

I have no idea what they ended up needing that flash for. But in the future, if you want to prevent me freaking out and stealing your lens, learn how to use at least the auto function. There really is no effort to it.

Love,
Annalee.