Say Braaaiiiinnsss!

What I failed to mention before, was that two equals three for large values of two. Or something.

So. The zombie camera. Remember that? I said one of two things would happen: they’d fix it for free and send it back to me, or they’d tell me I’d have to pay to fix it and I’d say DO NOT WANT and I’d have no camera. But lurking in the back of my mind was the third thing that could happen, which I had discovered when poking around the internets trying to diagnose the camera’s ailment.

Sometimes, the repair centre receives a camera with the fixable-for-free image sensor defect, but the camera is so old that they can’t be arsed to dig up the parts to repair it, and instead send a “new” camera to replace it. And by “new”, I mean “old and refurbished but still a better model than what was sent in”. It sounded like people would, for instance, send in their six year old camera and receive a four year old refurb.

I was torn on whether I wanted this to happen to me. The zombie camera was a PowerShot S230. It was oooold, but also a very solid model, that had served me well all these years. I’d have no say over what they might send me as a replacement. For all I knew, it could be the little-known PowerShot AssGoblin, eleven days newer than the S230, which would only take pictures if you hopped on one foot while reciting the alphabet backwards when you pushed the button, and furthermore all the pictures would contain a superimposed image of flowered granny panties, and FURTHERMORE, it would arrive encrusted with suspicious blue goo because its previous owner was a melting Smurf.

I did not want the AssGoblin.

So when a box arrived in the mail from Canon, I was a little apprehensive. And pleased, of course – because the mere arrival of the box ruled out the “you have to pay for repairs” option. Whatever they’d done to my little zombie camera, they’d done for free. So there was that.

The box was rather small.

Well then, I thought as I pried it open, I guess they sent back my zombie, because there’s not enough room in here for a boxed up new camera. Little did I know that camera-box technology had grown by leaps and bounds since the last time I purchased a camera, and this was what the box contained:

First realization: That’s not my zombie.

I examined the included invoice (amount due: $0.00) with all the info about the repair.

Second realization: This is not a refurb. It appears to be new, for reals.

I toddled over to the intarwebs to see what exactly this SD1100 thingergummy was.

Third realization: This is not an old model. It came out last year. In fact, its replacement only JUST came out like a month ago, and up until then it was the CURRENT model in its line.

WOAH.

So. I totally owe someone at Canon some extensive sexual favours, because the more I researched, the more I realized that had the zombie camera not been eligible for a free-repair, and had I scraped together enough money to replace it, this is almost definitely the exact camera I would have replaced it with. And I’d just received it for free. Holy shit! Please excuse me while I do a small, tasteful dance of glee.

…

All right, all done.

I played around with the new shiny for a bit, and it’s quite an improvement over the old one. I know the photography buffs with their digital SLRs are scoffing at me squeeing over my little point ‘n’ shoot, but hell, I’m no expert, all I need is something to snap pics of shiny things. The old camera could not change this shot

to this shot

just by turning on macro mode.

Of course, the colours were still all wrong, and I thought perhaps I should finally learn how to set my white balance. The new camera has the same presets as the old one: sunlight, cloud, tungsten, fluorescent, etc. But there’s no setting for “some sunlight but also a desk lamp to zap some shadows with a whiter light than a regular light bulb”, and similar sorts of madness. There is a manual white balance mode that I had calmly and deliberately ignored on the old camera because it was scary. But it was time to suck it up and learn. So I asked a friend who knows about such things.

Me: I don’t understand how to use manual white balance.
Friend: Well, if you turn on manual mode and look for the menu-
Me: No, I know how to FIND it, I just don’t know how to USE it!
Friend: Oh! Just point it at something white.
Me: …
Friend: …?
Me: THAT’S ALL? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

*headdesk*

Anyway, since I am once again in possession of a working camera, my blog shall survive! Now it’s only dependent on me updating it, and we all know how totally reliable I am with that. Yup.

But, you might ask, what became of the zombie camera? Is it terrorizing the hallways of the Canon repair centre, devouring the brains of the living cameras, adding to its zombie army of photographic devices that give you a screen full of ASSING FLASHING LINES instead of a pretty picture? Do cameras even have brains? If they do, should we worry? I can’t tell you whether sentient cameras are an imminent threat, but I can tell you the alleged fate of my own little zombie…

The zombie camera is dead. Long live the zombie camera.

23 Apr 2009  ·   Tags: I Am Going Mad, Yarn Porn