The Death of a Camera

On 19th July 2007 at 1.08pm exactly, my camera died. It was a Samsung Digimax 430 - 4 million Mega Pixels, with a viewfinder, lots of zoom and small-ish LCD screen. I was heartbroken.

We were on holiday in the New Forest and we had gone for a drive along the coast south of where we were staying. I had seen the Isle of Wight across the Solent (bringing back happy memories for me, mainly having my ears pierced the day before my 14th Birthday against my mother's wishes) and I wanted to take a photograph. We parked up and the two girls went to look for a beach so they could paddle (it was freezing so I have no idea why they would want to). I took the picture below:

Then I checked it and zoomed in on the Needles to see if they were visible (they're very faint and to the right of the Island in the photo). Then I turned the camera off. It started to retract its lens and then beeped 4 times at me and got stuck.

No problem, I changed the batteries (for once I had come prepared and I had some freshly recharged ones with me). I turned the camera on and it beeped at me 4 times and turned off but did not retract its lens. I repeated the procedure more in hope than expectation a couple times more and then set off after my husband, who had walked down the beach, to see if he could do anything. He couldn't, to my dismay, so I put it and its half-retracted lens back in its case and fought back the tears.

I got this camera for Christmas in 2004. I'm pretty sure the first picture I took with it was of my younger daughter, Bobbie. I took it at 8.15 on Christmas Day 2004. She's stuffing her face with toasted Milk Roll and Jam. It's a family Yuletide tradition, you see (toasted Milk Roll and Jam, not taking pictures). The camera did me good service and I've taken loads of photos with it since, some of which I've uploaded onto my blogs. Now it's broken and I don't know if it can be fixed. It is a bit like losing an old friend but, unlike old friends who are lost and now departed (Jimmy Ruffin reference there) the camera could be replaced. My family were a bit apprehensive about buying a new one but when they realised I was going to sulk for the rest of the holiday if I didn't get a new one, we went off in search of one and I got a brand new Samsung Digimax S630 - no viewfinder but a whopping 2.5cm LCD display, 6 million Mega Pixels, plenty of zoom and lots of other things that I haven't worked out yet.

So to paraphrase a not particularly common phrase:

"The Camera is dead: Long live the Camera"

and here's a photo I took with the new one. I used the macro setting (which was on the old one but never seemed to produce anything quite like this) and I took it in the Eden Project on Thursday.