Then, about this time last year, I was
walking in the woods at the back of the pond on a hot day photographing
wildlife when I lost the grip on the camera and it flew-off, mercifully landing
in some soft pine-needle leaf mould under a Scot's Fir.
I didn't notice for a few days but the
large jigget on the lens (which had become an obvious problem) had been knocked out of the way, bargain! So I carried
on with it for another year, but recently the lens opening/closing mechanism had
been playing-up (a common problem with them), so I knew it had to be replaced
and was hoping it would last until after the storage unit move (8 weeks
Wednesday if my sums are right) - when it's battery housing went phutt!
I umm'ed and arrh'ed at what to get, popped
into Farnbourough and looked around, checked Argos (four day wait) and ended-up getting basically the same
machine from a Swiss dealer off Amazon
- yeah! Kill the High Street!
The reason I picked the same machine is
because the dead one (which can still serve in an emergency) was four years old
to the month practically, and was therefore the longest-lasting of the six I've
had since 2007. They all died (with the exception of the first, a Fuji) because
they are carried 24/7, bare, in my trouser-pocket and get hard-knocks and lots
of fabric-lint and other dust working into their bodies. They also get a lot of
use, I may pull them out several times a day, in addition to actual toy 'photo-sessions'.
But, - as you can see from the above - the
worst problem with a long-lived one, is electronic dust. You can format the SD-card
occasionally, or even get a new one, but there is a build-up of electronic
'crap' on the camera's own brains, both the main memory and the exposure screen/sensors
and there's nothing you can do about that.
Those two photographs were taken a few
seconds apart - as long as it took to remove the elastic-band and swap the
batteries and SD-card - with identical settings (macro and two stops down on
the exposure) with unchanged artificial light.
The same thing, just like with humans - the
fog of age!
It was still taking OK pictures, but I had 'excused
it' to you a few times since the autumn, usually when shooting in poor light.
Soooooo . . . should be some improvement in pictures for a while, but there's a
lot of old ones in the queue and other peoples images, scans &etc, so it
shouldn't actually be that noticeable?
Cover the lower image with a book or your
hand and the upper image is acceptable, but comparing the two is sobering! You
have no idea, with digitals; how the camera is slowly degrading.
I'm going to try and keep it in a little
self-seal bag (or series of self-seal bags, they won't last long in a pocket
either!), this time, to cut the ingress of particles, but they weren't
ultimately the problem, it was the battery trap-door catch, killed the camera!
The Second Fuji was OK, three years, but it's brain went very suddenly and
while there had been global recalls of the same units a year or two earlier, I
was in another legal battle at the time so couldn't be arsed to pursue Fuji
(who claimed they couldn't find the crappy images of the rose I put on the blog
which showed the problem!), and when that battle settled I bought a Samsung (in cherry red to match my
'phone! Tart!) in late 2011.
When the lens-winding mechanism on that one
failed in 2013, I got a similar Nikon,
on offer at Argos for 40-odd quid,
that was an L27, and when the lens-wind went on that; within a year, I rushed up to the
local Argos with the warranty (and the receipt - always keep it for the first
12 months!) and they happily gave me an upgrade/replacement for nothing.
As the 29 did so well, I've stuck with the
Nikon's, all three - L27, 29 and A10 - are 16.1 mega-pixels; I toyed with a 20.1,
but the extra expense didn't add up to the limited extra image size, so I went with
the same again!
This problem with the winding mechanism
probably is connected to the dust and pocket-fluff - wearing down the
very fine bayonet-fit channels and the little ears that travel in them,
telescoping the lens's; in the end the ears pop-out of the channels and the
micro-motor rattles like a dying thing!
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