Broken Camera

About 4 and a half months ago my husband bought me a FujiFilm FinePix S2890 for my birthday.

And I loved it!

Most of the photos on this blog so far (and in a few posts I'm planning but haven't published) were taken with it, and while I don't have much in the way of photography talent, I thought I took some pretty good photos with it.

Then on New Year's Eve, it broke. Towards the end of the night, I was trying to take a photo fireworks going off by the town hall, and it started getting an error that told me to turn off the camera and turn it on again.

I'd had this problem once before, while taking photos of the Christmas Markets, but it was very cold that night and a day or two later the camera was working again. It just needed to warm up.

And so I wasn't too concerned about it at first. The night had been very, very smoky and I thought it might need some times to air out. But... nothing. It turns on, the messages show up on the screen, but not the live view, and I get the error.

So I posted on google+ about my problem, since I have some photography friends there about what I should do. I got the usual, check the battery, leave overnight in a bag of rice (to dry it out) but nothing helped.

I emailed FujiFilm US to ask what I should do, and got a thoroughly unhelpful answer where it was clear no one had actually read my email. They just said I'd have to send it to them if I wanted any help.

Then I emailed FujiFilm EU to see where I should send it for repairs in Germany. Unfortunately, it looks like it will cost a lot more if I don't have the proof of purchase (they implied it would be free if the camera was less than a year old), and ofcourse we can't find the receipt. Bags aren't typically given with purchases in Germany to cut down on waste, so it's very easy for things to get seperated, especially when one is a peice of paper and the other is a shiny new camera.

I'm going to try to contact the place where it was bought from, since the serial number is printed on the box and I know the date it was bought. Hopefully they have it in their records that it was bought that day and I can use that to prove it's less than a year old.

But overall, I am incredibly disappointed in Fuji Film. I actually suggested in the email that I open it up and try to clean it with an air puffy (I thought perhaps the smoke from the fireworks had damaged it), and that got no response at all. One of my Photo friends told me that it's actually very dangerous to open a camera as the flash capacitors will still be charged, you can get a sever electric shock  which will hurt you and destroy the rest of the camera. He said he did this once and it was like a small explosion!