In 2001 I bought a Sony CD Mavica digital camera for the 'bargain' price of £850. At the time it was the business: 3.3 megapixel, CDR/CDRW, very good Carl Zeiss lens and very good macro. The reason I chose that camera is because I was going to do my gunshot research in Johannesburg in 2002 and I didn't have access to any computers. Plus, the images are sensitive in terms of patient confidentiality and the images were numerous: 1600 in all. I thought it would be better to have them permanently archived on CDRs at 50p a pop. Anyway, the camera came with me to JHB and survived quite a lot: it was knocked, dropped, smeared with blood, cleaned with strong hospital disinfectants, taken up in a military and police helicopter and also used on various live-fire testing of ammunition in quite harsh conditions.
The camera performed beautifully and all was glorious until January 2003. I was using the camera in the operating theatre here in London (taking shots for a how-to poster involving a fluoroscopy system) when disaster struck. I had to pull the equipment away from the operating table in an emergency and I forgot all about the camera. I lowered the X-ray arm (it is hydraulic, very heavy) and I only noticed my screw-up when I heard the sound of plastic cracking. I had crushed the camera under the X-ray arm! When I raised it again the control knob had been pushed clear into the chassis and the camera looked like Bob from The Black Hole. Amazingly it still worked after I prised the knob back out and bent the on/off lever straight, the only thing was I couldn't change any of the settings. So I sent the camera in to Sony and they 'fixed it'. Well, it was never the same. The control knob always felt a bit off and sure enough after a few months the settings selection on the knob wouldn't work. By now (late 2003) I wasn't keen on spending more money on the camera, for repairs. Better units were already out and dealing with Sony for repairs is a big pain. But the camera worked fine, I just couldn't finalize any of the disks and had to copy them via DirectCD (UDF access). It even survived being placed in a 1,5 Tesla magnetic field when I crawled into the bore of a magnetic resonance scanner to photograph ferrous bullets swinging on a string.
Now, today I went paintballing down in Whiteleaf South and I got shot by a whole lot of people all at once (I suspect they engineered it) because now I have 5 bruises on the right shoulder and back and a very nasty close-range one on the left shoulder with a white center and little subcutaneous haemorrhages in a ring around it. I was so impressed with that one, I wanted a photo to show the {bleep} who did it. Ja, I set it to timer mode, took all the pictures, reached for the camera and saw it topple off my desk in slow motion. It landed on the extended lens mechanism and pressed the lens assembly into the case at a 15 degree angle. I couldn't get it loose and I have opened up the camera and found that the sleeve that is attached to the motor and which encloses the lens is cracked on one side and completely buckled on the other. In short, this camera is now deceased. It is a pity, because I took many pictures with this (all the ones I contributed to the Amiga.Org photo album were done with the Mavica, except the raytraces). So it is a bit sad, but now that I think of it philosophically it paid for itself back in 2002 and gave me good service, perhaps beyond what it should have done. And let's face it, the camera is dated now.
So I am now going to have to look for a new camera.
I am going to give the batteries and charger to my sister (her camcorder uses the same) but if anyone has one of these cameras and wants spares (the CD-drive, LCD screen and chassis are all good, as well as all the PCBs) just let me know and I'll send these to you).
But that's the end of the line for a very useful camera.
