Iceland Stories #3 – The Beautiful Place that Broke my Camera

There is this place in the Highlands of Iceland where I saw many pictures that left me completely amazed. So when I decided to travel to Iceland last year in September, I knew I absolutely had to see it with my own eyes. Unfortunately, it broke my camera.

Unfortunately, the place is not so easy to reach. But well, I took the organizational challenge. I basically planned the first couple of days just around getting to this spot. The roads to get there were overall better than expected but oh boy the last bit to the parking was bumpy and steep.

But there we were and it looked even more amazing than in the pictures. However, it was also very cold (around 3° Celcius), extremely windy, and the rain was on-off. Of course that couldn’t stop us so we went right into it.

And I turned completely crazy about taking pictures. I already used my camera fairly often in light rain and never had problems with it, so of course, I didn’t let that stop me this time, too. Unfortunately, the rain was just constant after a while. And as we also started to hike up a bit, I put my camera in my backpack with the rain cover on top. When we reached the top, the rain was gone again – but my camera didn’t work anymore when I put it out of the backpack again. Showed a “battery connection error” and my spare battery didn’t work either. I am very grateful I could at least the pictures I wanted to take but still pretty bummed. At that time I thought it would be a temporary error and it would go back to normal after some minutes. I shoot on a 5D MIII, that I bought used in 2017, so it’s not the newest and I already had some minor hiccups.

My feeling changed completely when we arrived at our accommodation for the night and it still didn’t work. I was already thinking about how I could get to Reykjavik (by far the biggest city in Iceland) and buy a new camera (which would have completely blown my budget). But at least for the next day that wasn’t possible because we already planned on seeing another place in the Highlands. In the course of the evening, the error then changed to a “lense connection error” but at least I could turn it on again – there was still hope. So overnight I opened every slot of the camera to let it dry as I assumed humidity caused the errors. But next morning – nothing. We went on our drive back into the Highlands, stopped at two beautiful spots – still nothing. In the afternoon, shortly before our final destination, we stopped again for a little hike. At that point, I wasn’t hoping the camera would be working again when I checked on it – but boom here it was completely back to normal!

Couldn’t have been a better moment and I was so so grateful. The landscapes just until we would have been back in Reykjavik were so magical, I would have missed so much. And on the way out of the Highlands on the next day, we could even stop again at one of the two places I missed so I could catch up on the pictures I couldn’t take the day before. So an absolute happy end here – and my camera is working since then. Still, I want to get a new one this year before the next bigger trip – there’s only so far you can push your luck.