Saturday, October 19, 2013

Sony, Stop Teasing Me

On Thursday I started my morning as usual by pouring a big glass full of caffienated soda and checking out The Online Photographer.
Scrolling down to a previous post about Sony's newest camera with the latest and greatest possible features: a flat compact body with 24 or 36 megapickles for full-frame lenses? WTF?
I started to recall the good old days when my very first digital camera WAS the state-of-the-art, and made by Sony.
Only 5 pickles but a sweet Zeiss lens, and I learned how to make crap and an occasional decent photo with it.
(Back-story is that nobody respected Sony at ALL back then, and for some reason they still don't...)

So, I'm reminded that I ought to check the battery level on cam #1 and see if it's still okay as spare power for another one in my stable despite the fact that the camera itself stopped working over 5 years ago.

Flicked the 'On' lever and got a good power-up, then spent two minutes setting the date/time. Got a reading in the high-90% range for the battery. Can someone tell me why I took the lens cap off at this point?

When a camera decides to suddenly work again after 5+ years, you hit the shutter button as fast as you can!

As I made my way through layers of home security to our backyard, I noted how quickly my fingers remembered all the buttons and settings to get a decent macro photo, since that is where the F717 truly excelled for me.
On auto-pilot I shoved that delightful lens up against one of my hanging plants and hit the shutter once more, and got a lucky 2nd picture before the camera gave up and stopped playing nice again:

That's the look and quality I remember!
My eyes rolled back 72 degrees for a few seconds, then I started gathering tools and organizational stuff to try and fix my old jacked camera.



Got about 30% of the way in and cleaned/reinserted the ribbon cables.
Also poked at stuff with my finger.
Didn't fix it, but also didn't make it any worse--all functions still work and no parts left over after reassembly.
A good practice run for going deeper in a few days.




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