The digital camera saga (Part 2)

Christmas day was celebrated at my sister's place in Virigina. That's about 500 miles from where I bought the camera, which will come into play later in the story. My brother had bought his camera a sexy little Casio camera (not a super thing Exilim but close to that size). It had a huge LCD screen, and an enormous collapsable zoom lens. She had one of the Logitech Pocket digitals given to her Christmas of the previous year. At the time I thought it was the best choice. She was adamant she needed something better than that cheap camera, but she grudgingly used it for a year, until my brother caved in and bought the $400 camera. She was showing it off the minute they arrived at the house and started unloading their suitcases and Christmas presents. So my girlfriend was there, I'm sure wishing she had a camera like that one, but she had to wait until we opened gifts on Christmas day.

When the day finally arrived, I tried to make it as special as possible by including a large memory card for the camera. The NHJ also has an SD card slot to save more pictures onto. What could be better? A $100 camera and a $30 memory card, and you got a spanking good digital camera with a flash and an LCD preview screen! So all was well, she was happy and it was my job to get the thing up and running which I dearly wanted to do, because of how much my brother's girlfriend was showing off HER digital camera. After we collected all the wrapping paper, ate some breakfast, etc. I headed up to my brother-in-law's computer and opened the camera package to start getting things set up. And in the words of Art Speigleman's MAUS,... And here's where my troubles began.

Sometimes I'm very controlled and strict in adhering to the rules when operating anything electronic. Other times, when I'm feeling overly familiar with a particular device, I'll just fake it and try something out to see if it works. I had already owned two digital cameas from Logitech that used the SmalCamera PCB kit. I assumed that electronically all cameras that used that kit, would WORK THE SAME WAY. So I decided Windows XP was savvy enough to handle seeing a new camera on it's USB bus and just know what to do, right? So I took the USB cable, attached one end to the camera, the other to the PC and decided," Hey, might as well let it sit and charge up the battery for a while so my girlfriend can start taking pictures immediately". I hadn't even really read through the directions, I didn't install any software, all I did was just hook the thing up thinking all would be okay. I went downstairs for half an hour (knowing the full charge of the camera takes closer to 5 hours). I just wanted enough juice in the battery to take a few pictures with it outside, that afternoon.

When I picked up the camera, I thought I smelled something funny, but ignored it. I left it plugged in and when I grabbed the right side, it felt warm, and I mean REALLY warm. And I thought to myself, "Wow, I don't ever remember any of my cameras feeling this warm when they were charging up." Then I stuck my nose down next to the camera, and it smelled of heavy duty ozone, like some big electrical spark or something. And I thought to myself in Cosmo Kramer fashion, looking at it dumbly, "Oh man, this can't be good." I was dumbfounded. I had no idea what went wrong, I went through everything I did that might have caused this to happen. And then I had to come up with an explanation as to why the camera was not working. It was obvious to me I had probably ruined it. So I pulled out the directions and read them for the first time. I installed the software that came on the CD, rebooted and after everything came up again, I plugged in the camera. I went back downstairs and hoped for the best.

After three hours I went back upstairs, and the computer was still feeling hot and smelled odd. So I finally admitted to my girlfriend there may be something wrong with the camera. We were going to go outside for a walk after eating Christmas dinner. I double-checked the camera one last time. I pushed the power button, and the screen lit up for a second, then went out. I was never able to get it to power up again after that. It never acted like the battery was charging up. The light that indicates it's charging up would never stop blinking and light solidly. So I started sending emails to the NHJ support dept. I started thinking about returning it at the Ithaca Target store, I had all these plans. In hindsight I should have tried returning it while I was in Virginia, just to see if other Target stores even carried the camera. That would have saved me a few weeks of effort after we returned home.

Eventually I decided that I wouldn't take any action until I could get the receipt for the camera back home in Rochester. So I sat on my hands and waited. The first few days in Rochester I spent at my girlfriends house, so I didn't get the receipt right away. We celebrated New Years. And in fact earlier that same day I drove to the Target in Henrietta and tried exchanging the camera. Most frustrating experience ever in my book. I should have called all around Monroe county to see who carried the camera at their stores. Apparently Target stores are managed as seperate entities within a given region. They aren't forced to carry the SAME merchandise at EVERY store. Eventually I did call ALL AROUND. No store in Monroe county carried the camera. So I was left with driving to Ithaca to exchange the camera. But I worried terribly about whether or not they had any cameras left at the store. What if they were out???