Camera's back!

My camera's been away. My Panasonic DMC FS-15, that is. It had not been with me for the past three weeks. For a piece of equipment that accompanies me most every time I leave the house, I tell you, I missed it a lot. But I had to send it to the service centre.

The camera had been developing some small dark smudges on the images for quite a while now but lately, they had become more noticeable. I finally lost patience with it after I noticed the dark smudges becoming significantly worse, such as in this picture below. See them to the left of centre? There are more examples of the smudges here. No way that I could ignore them. I tell you, they spoil the mood completely.

So I took the camera to the shop where I had purchased it in September 2009. Handed it in to them on 19 Feb 2011. After about 10 days, I called them and they give me all sorts of excuses but basically they were pushing the blame to the Panasonic service centre: they have lots of equipment to repair, it's not only cameras but lots of other devices, the service centre haven't given a quotation for the repair yet, blah, blah, blah...

Well, all this I don't want to know, I told the shop. I deal with you only; I don't deal with the service centre. All I'm interested in is to get my repaired camera back as soon as possible and it is the camera shop's interest to look after the needs of their customers. Without reminders. For all I know, the camera could be sitting forgotten in their drawers. Luckily, I still have my older and obsolete Konica Minolta Dimage Z5 as a backup unit.

Lo and behold, on 10 Mar 2011 I got a call from the shop to tell me that the camer'a back in their hands again and would I be so kind as to collect it as soon as I can. So how many days was that altogether? Nineteen days. I can't believe that it took so long. Poorer by RM120 too. But at least, I have my handy pocket camera to use again. Mmm, I'm thinking about a basic DSLR. Wonder whether it's worth spending RM2,500 on it. My wife will probably say no, although my son will definitely say yes.