Well, here's something different. When I go to my games, features and assignments for the next month or so, I'll be toting something new along with me. A new camera.
"New" in the sense of "different." But not really new. Because the "new" camera is my own camera, now pressed into service, pinch-hitting for my "work" camera, which has fallen deathly ill. For instance, when I went out to cover a wrestling meet tonight, I took that camera with me. It worked well, too.
The old one was showing signs of age for some time, but it had been working fairly reliably up until last Saturday. I had some writing to do Saturday morning, as usual, and then went out to take some hockey pictures at a local rink. OK, it worked well enough. Next stop, a JV girls volleyball tourney. I took off my jacket, opened up the camera bag, found a good position and switched the camera on.
Except, it wouldn't turn on. Well, it did, but only to give me a blunt message on the back display: "Card error." Uh-ohhh. Fortunately, I carry a spare card with me, so I took that one out and installed that one instead. Turned it on. "Card error." It kept saying "Card error" whenever I switched it on, regardless of which card I inserted or which set of batteries I used. (I tried switching batteries, too--also to no avail.) Eventually, I got the message.
What to do? I wasn't too far from home, so I drove there, got my own camera, drove back and got some pictures. Done.
My work camera's condition hasn't changed one bit since Saturday. The next step is shipping it to the repair center in New Jersey and waiting for an estimate--and then the repair. They estimate a month or so.
Of course, the company would probably be much better off investing in a new camera. The old one, after all, has fired over 20,000 pictures in the four years since we got it, and it's seen lots of duty. Lately, it's been going through batteries much faster than before, which, to me, was a sign of problems down the road. So my problems last Saturday weren't exactly a shock to me. And I had mentioned that to the bosses a month or so ago.
But you have to look at it their way: A new camera would be about $500. Repairing the old one would be about $200-250. Hey, they're probably thinking, we can save $300 and get the old camera all fixed up again! That's my definition of penny wise and pound foolish.
So I'm shipping the old one off to New Jersey, and then we'll wait and see what the repair center estimate says. Meanwhile, my little camera suddenly has now become my work camera as well, and the people in charge at the office clearly don't have a problem with asking me to use the equipment I bought for myself for work.
Maybe the next time my old, dim, hard-to-read monitor in the office goes out, they'll expect me to bring over the monitor I use here at home. Stranger things have happened.
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