Red Skies at Night

First, the good news. I went on a two-day camping trip in the mountains with my local photography club and bagged some nice material. I always prefer to put fresh work on the blog rather than old stuff and this will replenish the stocks a little bit; I was feeling loth to dig around the archives.

Now the bad news. My best camera is on the fritz.

That’s right, my trusty little Ricoh GX-100, less than 6 months old, started malfunctioning badly today, just as we were returning to civilization.  When I press the zoom rocker switch, the lens goes crazy trying to rack itself in and out and finally it gives up and racks back out to 24mm.  So I’m stuck at 24mm.  Very annoying.  I guess it’s back to the Casio for a while, and I’m going to keep my eye firmly on Photokina. Here’s hoping there is an interesting compact announced.  Maybe the new Canon G10 that’s coming out.

It’s really a shame because I have fallen for this camera.  It’s the best compact I’ve used, period.  But Ricoh really seems to a have a quality control issue on their hands, from what I’m hearing from other users.

It was also a wake up call for me to be sure to bring a backup camera.  I didn’t miss much this time, but I was lucky.  If it had gone out early in the trip, I would have been SOL (see photo).