Camera off to the repair shop
I mentioned in a recent blog that I dropped my camera and broke it while hiking on Saturday. The rear LCD screen cracked and doesn't work anymore. The rest of the camera did seem to be okay, though, and in fact I continued shooting pictures of it while hiking the rest of the day Saturday and Sunday. I was able to use the digital eyepiece to compose pictures and navigate menus.
I felt bummed about the damage for a while on Saturday. My immediate thought was, "Well, there's $800 down the drain." And this wasn't even an older, well used camera; I've only had it for 3 months. That made the loss sting more.
But wait, it gets worse. Making the loss sting even more was the fact that this is the second camera I've broken this summer! Back in June I broke the Fuji X-A1 I'd bought in 2014. I was less bummed about that loss than this one because the X-A1 was a less expensive starter camera I bought to try out Fuji's product line, and I was ready to replace it anyway. But suffering that second breakage 4 months ago was like rubbing salt in the wound.
While sometimes things get worse, sometimes they get better. This situation got better on Tuesday when I finally got around to calling Fuji's repair center. I was prepared for a runaround, as an excellent local camera repair technician I called first warned me they're very proprietary, and then their 800 number involved a confusing phone tree that rejected the repair office extension listed on their website's "Contact Us" page. But all that FUD melted away within a minute of reaching a live human. The tech I spoke to A) spoke English fluently, B) was matter-of-factly polite, C) was knowledgeable of camera repairs, D) offered me an estimate of $120-150 based on the damage I described, and E) gave me confidence that Fuji runs its repair business to provide genuine customer service.
So Tuesday evening I boxed up my busted camera in a well padded shipping box, and yesterday morning (Wednesday) I dropped it off at the post office. Via priority mail it'll get to Fuji USA in New Jersey on Friday, then hopefully Fuji will get it fixed within two weeks, and when they Fed-Ex it back to me I should have it back around October 12.
Sending the camera off for repair isn't ideal. It'll be gone for three weeks- more if parts are back-ordered- so I won't have it for our upcoming trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas. I know, who cares about taking pictures in Arkansas? But I do, because I've never been there. In fact that's precisely the reason I'm going.
I'll survive this short time without my newest camera. I've always got the camera built in to my iPhone, I have a 7-year-old Panasonic P&S camera- which, surprisingly, still takes better pictures than my far-newer iPhone in some respects- and I can blow the dust off the 8-year-old Nikon D60 DSLR that's sitting on my shelf. Plus, if I really feel the need to carry a modern camera, I can rent a Fuji body from a local shop for about $75 for the week.
I felt bummed about the damage for a while on Saturday. My immediate thought was, "Well, there's $800 down the drain." And this wasn't even an older, well used camera; I've only had it for 3 months. That made the loss sting more.
But wait, it gets worse. Making the loss sting even more was the fact that this is the second camera I've broken this summer! Back in June I broke the Fuji X-A1 I'd bought in 2014. I was less bummed about that loss than this one because the X-A1 was a less expensive starter camera I bought to try out Fuji's product line, and I was ready to replace it anyway. But suffering that second breakage 4 months ago was like rubbing salt in the wound.
While sometimes things get worse, sometimes they get better. This situation got better on Tuesday when I finally got around to calling Fuji's repair center. I was prepared for a runaround, as an excellent local camera repair technician I called first warned me they're very proprietary, and then their 800 number involved a confusing phone tree that rejected the repair office extension listed on their website's "Contact Us" page. But all that FUD melted away within a minute of reaching a live human. The tech I spoke to A) spoke English fluently, B) was matter-of-factly polite, C) was knowledgeable of camera repairs, D) offered me an estimate of $120-150 based on the damage I described, and E) gave me confidence that Fuji runs its repair business to provide genuine customer service.
So Tuesday evening I boxed up my busted camera in a well padded shipping box, and yesterday morning (Wednesday) I dropped it off at the post office. Via priority mail it'll get to Fuji USA in New Jersey on Friday, then hopefully Fuji will get it fixed within two weeks, and when they Fed-Ex it back to me I should have it back around October 12.
Sending the camera off for repair isn't ideal. It'll be gone for three weeks- more if parts are back-ordered- so I won't have it for our upcoming trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas. I know, who cares about taking pictures in Arkansas? But I do, because I've never been there. In fact that's precisely the reason I'm going.
I'll survive this short time without my newest camera. I've always got the camera built in to my iPhone, I have a 7-year-old Panasonic P&S camera- which, surprisingly, still takes better pictures than my far-newer iPhone in some respects- and I can blow the dust off the 8-year-old Nikon D60 DSLR that's sitting on my shelf. Plus, if I really feel the need to carry a modern camera, I can rent a Fuji body from a local shop for about $75 for the week.