Saturday, June 16, 2007

When carelessness attacks

I went on a hike today on the old Natchez Trace. I would write about the hike here and post photos, but I can't get to the photos, since I also managed to break my camera on the hike.

I keep my camera in this pocket on the side of my pants because it's handy. This hike crosses a stream - no bridge - and the description I had said "mid shin" high water. Apparently the author who wrote that was taller than me, although I should have thought to put my camera somewhere more secure anyway. It only got barely wet, though - not the battery end - and afterwards it was still working. Since my pocket was now wet, I stuck the camera in my backpack, apparently not securely, because it fell out. It fell only about a foot or two from the ground, and it did land on something soft. Then it stopped working. Thus I don't know whether the water or the fall caused it to break, but I'm leaning towards the latter. When I power it on, the lens tries to open up, which suggests it isn't shorted out.

But to be safe, it's airing out for a day or so. Then I'll take it to a camera repair place right here in the neighborhood to see if repairing it costs more than buying new.

Update: There must have been some water in it, because it now turns on without any difficulty. However, after powering it tells me "card cover open." I didn't have a memory card in there, and I didn't see anything to "open" other than the battery cover, which latches pretty solidly. Upon consultation with my sister, who has the same camera, we determined there is a tiny eeny-weenie plastic part that seems to not be there, which presumably is the latch. So I went back to some Amazon reviews I had seen earlier. Several users reported broken latches, the repair cost for which is almost the cost of a new camera. I guess it's still worth taking to the store - maybe they're willing to jerryrig something Olympus isn't, but I don't have high hopes.

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