Perhaps you recognize the title of this post as a paraphrase of Mark Haddon's wonderful novel. What happened to my beloved little Canon digital is a sad event with a sad outcome, as I discovered yesterday. Although when you read what happened, you may be ROFLYAO.
I bought the camera in February, mainly in anticipation of taking it with me to MQX and other quilt shows. It is small, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but with a nice big LCD screen of about three inches. In addition to quilt shows, I used it to take pictures of my finished quilts, my grandchildren, my flowers, the mountains...it was so handy to carry around. My husband has a wonderful Sony with a large zoom lens that is much larger and about twice as expensive, but I hated to borrow his to take to quilt meetings or shows. Besides, mine took better videos!
So, one night in the mountains, I took it with us when we went on a Gator ride up to the top to view the sunset and the mountain valleys. I got some great shots of the mist and fog shrouding the lower areas. A little wine, beautiful scenery...
and when we got back to the cabin, I ran in to make a pit stop, and received a phone call on my cell, which I carry clipped to my waistband when we are in the mountains. Everyone else has a Nextel phone, but unfortunately their service area has not reached out remote little mountain home yet. Anyone that wants to reach us calls my cell phone number. So, here is the curious (or sad or embarrassing) part. I stood up in order to get to my cell phone off my waistband, said hello, and my actions caused my poor little Canon to flip out of the pocket of my jacket and splash into-GASP- the great new porcelain Toto fixture we had recently installed. OH NO! I immediately tried to turn it on, and nothing happened. I took it apart and dried it overnight. It came back on, and I was able to view my pictures just fine. Happy dance! Then I tried to take a picture, and got nothing but wavy lines. UH OH. So I let it dry out several more days. More bad news...got a Lens Error message. The lens is frozen and won't go in or out at all. Not looking good, but I took it to the store where I purchased it. They sent it off for repair. Got a phone call yesterday...the repair shop says that when they took the camera apart, they found CORROSION! That VOIDED MY WARRANTY! It CANNOT BE REPAIRED! And of course, I had not purchased the insurance or extra warranty that would have covered damages due to any reason.
So, it's Requiem for a Camera, and a bit of advice.
Buy the warranty.
Buy a waterproof case.
Use the camera case you purchased with the long strap instead of sticking the oh-so-convenient camera in your pocket.
Bye-Bye little camera. :(
Ruth-Ellen has rigged up a wire to her deck railing, and attaches the quilts with those heavy black paper clips.
Here is the detail shot I took of her lovely art quilt, which was quilted by Cathy Kirk.
After the photography lesson, we learned how to make potato latkes, and shared a pot-luck lunch. Then we went to the computer to see how Ruth-Ellen organizes her photos with a program called Lightroom, and edits with Photoshop Elements. I am determined to become good at using Elements---some day!
