Camera issues and a cool link.

o/

Well, as you all well know I've had photo quality issues since the inception of this blog (indeed before that actually) After having to delete virtually all of my photos (again!) following the Meltdown tourney, I went perusing the Internet to see if anyone else was having similar issues with their Vivtar 8690 cameras. As it turns out, people were, lots of people...

Once a respected brand, Vivitar some years back was bought out by a Chinese company named Sakar. Since then their cameras have gone from 'good' to more or less 'disposable' in quality. The nicest comments that I could find after two hours of searching was 'its a good camera for a 7 year old'. Another said, I use the tripod & can take decent photos for my blog, but its all but worthless for anything else'. No, I didn't write that but easily could have. However even for my blog, despite the use of a light box, my photos have been at best 'passable' (Murl @ the 13th Cadian gets better photos from his cell phone). When telling a friend about my camera the other day, he asked if I knew how to turn on the flash. Well, for the close up setting the flash won't turn on by default, and there's nothing to be done about it. He also said looking at the photos on here was like a game of 'guess what the silhouette is supposed to be.'

ouch.

Luckily though my story has a happy ending. My sister bought the camera for me for Christmas last year, on a whim she got the retailer's premium warranty. Now usually these are a complete waste of $$$, and despite knowing that she figured it was only a few dollars so why not. Skip forward to now and after registering my camera on the Office Depot warranty site, jumping through a few hoops and getting into a chat with a customer support person, I was able to tell them my concerns: basically 'it's junk.' Warranties don't cover 'junk' however I was asked if I had ever dropped it (in a manner that implied that my answer needed to be 'yes') admitting to knocking off my desk a week or two back, I got an immediate, 'no problem, you claim has been processed and approved.' A day later I received an emailed UPS label, so I boxed up the camera and it is currently enroute to Office depot's product protection center (or whatever its called) in Texas. In about 2-3 weeks after they receive it I'll receive a gift card for the full purchase price to use to buy something better! Conveniently, my birthday will roll in about the same time and my sister, hearing of my camera odyssey and likewise disappointed, has hinted that she'll probably contribute funds towards a new camera for my present (again).

In the interim, I'm without a camera, so Da Long Ways Dezert Groop may be a wall of text for a while (yes that warning is too late I know), but considering the photo quality you've been used to on here I gotta ask, is that such a bad thing?

Oh, and one last bit, check out this video clip here. its a digital recreation of Warsaw at the end of WWII and its amazing! It is for a museum in Poland. If you go to the last web address listed in the clip you can download a full screen version which shows even greater detail though the text isn't translated, which is why I'm routing you through the blog first. the clip on there is in English.