Off for repairs

So back in January my lovely wife went and bought me a new camera, a lovely and much desired Pentax K10D. I did a lot of research before I decided on the camera and I considered this the best option for me over similar Canon's or Nikon's.

And I've been enjoying it as much as possible over the past few months. The camera has held up remarkably well in the cold, but still, I didn't feel like pushing it, just in case. And there are only so many photos I can take of either Cathy or Boo before they start getting annoyed.

Which might explain why it took me so long to find the glitch. Yes, my new toy has a glitch. Cathy is unamused. Several weeks ago I noticed that when I popped up the flash to take a picture, the camera wouldn't work. Not only would the flash not go off, but camera itself wouldn't take a picture.

I puzzled over this for a week or two, figuring I must have done something to one of the settings. Then I began to worry I might have fried the camera with the exposure to the cold. Fortunately, one of my co-workers has a slightly older Pentax and told me to bring mine in. He was sure he could figure it out.

Turns out he couldn't either. However, he must hit better photo websites than I do. A search found out that there was a flaw with the early run of the camera. Turns out the circuit board controlling the flash had the bad habit of burning out in some of those early cameras after being used 20 or 30 times. Anything with a serial number starting with 22. Guess what the first two numbers are on my camera?

Fortunately, it's covered under the warranty and the camera is less than a year old. The bad news is that the receipt is gone. I can't believe I'm typing this, but we're pretty certain the dog ate it. However, we still have the box it came in, the Visa bill that says we spent an ungodly amount of money at Arctic Ventures and, if worse comes to worse, I believe I have photos on my hard drive of several of the staff at the store. Turns out they decided to play with the camera a bit before selling it and forgot to remove the memory card.

So I'm pretty certain I can get them to take the camera back and send it away for repairs. I believe it has to go to Toronto. It means I'll be without the camera for probably a month or more. Which is annoying and disappointing, but at least the camera can be fixed.

And most importantly, it's not my fault it broke. However, for the upcoming trip I'm back using the Sony DSC-F717. Glad I didn't get around to selling it yet...