A year ago, almost to the day, I wrote a post titled My Camera Bag. It was a sentimental trip through my chequered photographic career, looking at the cameras that I had owned over the years and the sad tale of them either being stolen or beaten to death by my reckless treatment.
At the time of writing that article I had been the owner of a Fujifilm X30 for around 10 months and had already had to send it off for repairs. That story had a happy ending with the camera being repaired under warranty but, alas, the sad tale of my unhappy partnership with cameras returned during our last travels through the South of New Zealand.
The camera started to malfunction early in those travels but the problem was intermittent so I ignored it in the hope that it would go away. On my return north a few weeks ago, I put the camera into a state of rest. Like overused muscles, maybe a little rest would allow it to recuperate. Sadly, the lack of use seems to compounded the affliction which now happens every time I turn it on. With further travels planned, I decided I had best do something about this calamity sooner rather than later.
As if the camera problem was not enough, it happened on a day when my beloved coffee machine also suffered terminal technoisis (built in redundancy). It was a black day indeed, no coffee to help me over my loss.
Was it worth getting repaired (the camera – the coffee machine is a NO) after my previous experiences with Fujifilm cameras? How many photos had I taken in 22 months of ownership, had I worn it out already? I Googled the question of how many shots a camera should be good for. This was difficult to determine as the model of camera is not old enough for any data to be available. I could find data in relation to more high end cameras where 100-200K of clicks should not be an issue. Gosh, I had only clicked off 13,006 photos (well the ones that I had not deleted) in 22 months of ownership.
I could not even find any instances of other X30 users suffering the same problem that I was. Maybe it was not a systemic problem with these cameras but the fault of the person who was using it.
I like my X30, it has been a great camera and the first one where I have been able to pretty much ignore auto settings and go solo with manual settings. Fingers crossed, it will be repairable without costing the earth. I suspect I would have a difficult time convincing ‘Treasurer Ruth’ that I need another camera, especially when she shows me her iPhone efforts which look pretty good (but of course not as good as I can take on the X30). When I think about it, she also avoids falling over or off bikes, does not take her phone out in unsuitable conditions, does not get up close and personal with sand or water just to get that ‘great shot’ In other words, she is careful and looks after her precious technology.
As I packaged it up for it’s trip back to Fujifilm I had to concede that it looked like it had suffered 22 years of use rather than 22 months.
The Angel Tandem - Adventures on the wrong side of 60 
Yes, we already learned the sand lesson the hard way. A dusty camping trip to Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument some years ago led to a premature death for an earlier camera. (Sure I could have paid to have it cleaned but there were no guarantees and a high price tag.) After our first 2 years of traveling around the world, my beloved camera started to falter. This time we paid for a cleaning. Now we have been (yet again) camping in the dusty US Southwest. I’m holding my breath….
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I sent if off for repair and it cost me a new lens, probably the most expensive component. However, I reasoned that there should be plenty of life in the rest of components so opted for the repair rather than an even more expensive replacement. Time will no doubt judge my decision. Given what had to be done, I suspect that the cause was my couple of tumbles that I have taken that resulted in bumps for the camera. I probably need an indestructible product. Look forward to reading about the camping.
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