"YESSSSSS!!!!

29th September, 2000

After taking my Agfa ePhoto 780c digital camera back to Harvey Norman to repair a dodgy connection somewhere inside, they said it would take up to 10 working days for it to come back. What they didnt tell me is that they would have to send it back to Agfa in Sydney and that the Olympics would push this time back to 5 weeks (what a sorry pissweek excuse). Anyhoo, I've got the camera back now. Agfa actually sent back a brand spanking new camera, and I all was well... or so I thought.

When I got home and cracked open the seal on the box, I noticed that the memory card supplied was only a 2MB card, not the 4MB card I originally got with the camera. I checked the side of the box and sure enough, it said it came with a 2MB card... not 4MB. I was not happy, but I would sort this out later. I loaded in the brand new batteries, popped in the memory card and flicked open the front slide cover to switch on the camera. Nothing. Removed the batteries and reinserted them. Nada. Tried brand new batteries. Zip. Made sure the memory card was in properly. Zilch. I swear, by this time I was ready to hit someone. I drove back to Harvey Norman and gave the camera a final test while in the car park. Negative. Good. I'd hate to look like a dick if I gave it to him and it worked. I walked to the counter and said to the guy "You're not gunna believe this". "What did you do to it this time?", he asked. What could I have done in half an hour?!? He took the camera and switched it on...

Nothing....... *phew*

He went through all the steps I've outlined above, and it still didn't work. Finally he inserted the memory card while it was switched on, something I hadn't tried. "BIP BIP", said the camera. Apparently that was all that was needed to initialise the camera for first use. Why didn't anybody tell me that I had to do that? I didn't have to do that with my last camera. Then I found out something which explained a lot of things. When I first bought my camera, I was accidently sold a display model. That's why:

• this new camera had everything in sealed plastic bags and had one of those little plastic film things over the LCD screen. My original camera wasn't like that.
• I got a 4MB card with the origianl camera. I wasn't suppoesd to, so the Harvey Norman dude couldn't do much about that. He did give me a $5 discount off a 16MB card which is a pretty pissweak effort really, but I got it anyway.

As you may have gathered from the comments on the front page, I got a little upset at my digital camera's distinct further lack of switch-on-and-be-useful-ness... even after receiving a brand new camera! (My second replacement!)

Well anyways, I took the defunct camera back into Harvey Norman on Friday evening and I was all like "This is crap, man" and the guy was like "Tell me about it" and I was like "Well if worst comes to worst, do you reckon I could pay the difference on a kick-ass new camera?" and he's like "I can't see why not. I'll see what I can do" and I was like "Sweeeeeet".

The behind-the-counter-dude there was the same behind-the-counter-dude that I've been dealing with, and despite my many going-off-my-trolly-at-the-nearest-person-because-my-cameras-a-hunk-o-shit shanannigans, he's been really great. Thanks pal! So now I'm shopping for a new kick-ass camera. The camera that I have my heart set on at the moment is the Ricoh RDC-7, their toppest of their range of kick-ass cameras. Check out this kick-ass review!

All my troubles are over. Sorry for the lateness of this update, but I've just been having so much fun with my brand spanking new Ricoh RDC-6000. I'll leave all the coolness of this camera up to the reviews, but I'll just say that even though I didn't end up getting the RDC-7 (it cost $2,000... I am NOT paying that for a camera), I'm still muchos impressedo (thats my spanish... pretty neat, eh?). Look below for a pic of the cam, as well as two sample pics that I've taken at their highest resolutions and qualities.

So that's my little camera adventure. Aren't you glad you read it now? Isn't your life so much more enriched?

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