The day I hated my 6008

[twoeye]

Love and Hate , so closely related:
I loved my Rolleiflex 6008i, I carried it all over Australia , made wonderful series with it. Actually made a living with it. But one day I hated the bloody thing to death ! In 1999 we arrived at Ayers Rock ( Uluru ) , that huge red rock in the center of Australia. We had been travelling for days in our old LandRover towing an old caravan. So it was great to finally be there we aimed to celebrate the milennium newyears eve there . We took a short rest and decided to go to 'the Rock'. No camera just a look. But after a few miles we saw this HUGE cloud developing over the rock, and when I say HUGE i mean extremely HUGE. So we thought "hmmm all the postcards show a blue sky with very little clouds , this must be unusual". Rushed back to the caravan, got the camerabag with rolleiflex 6008 set. Back to the Rock , the cloud had grown bigger into a fantastic oval kind of extraterrestial UFO hovering above the Rock. Uluru is about 3 - 4 Km in diameter ( 2-3 miles ) and the cloud could eat it 3 times or so . The rest of the sky was blue, the cloud was black/green/yellow .... it looked MEAN!!! We found a low hill with a great view to the ROCK with CLOUD. Got a tripod ready , fitted the Rolleiflex 6008i , aimed ........ battery flat, oh no worrie spare battery inserted..... oeps flat , Oh thanks I have a always a 3rd battery, (the camera used quite rapidly it's batteries)....... flat........ Yes then I hated the bloody 6000 series as a whole. The long hot journey with no charger handy must have depleted the batteries or so.
Later a friend who lived in the area made the pain even worse; " Jaap have you seen that cloud? the rain pounded the Rock to heavy , we had the biggest waterfalls ever, lasted for hours on end, nobody ever saw so much rain ever on the ROCK in such a short time, you are so lucky you got there in time , sure did you take good photos of it......?".
grrrrrrrrrrr
J.

[R-BUFF]