SONY rocks the house... and an explanation of why you haven't seen many pictures here lately

One of my most treasured possessions is my Sony DSC F717 camera. I love it like no other. We did months of research and field testing of high end digital cameras (alas, the Digital SLRs were FAR too expensive, then) and finally settled on the Sony. There were three major reasons we loved it (and still do!): 1) The real Zeiss lens. Both of us come from fields in which we do a LOT of microscopy, and Zeiss is the real deal. So a Zeiss lens on a consumer camera is a big deal to us. 2)The incredible detail in Macro mode. At the time this camera was leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors in Macro, and it's still better than a lot of what you can get. 3) I can take the pictures I want to take with little hassle. In fact, in 3 years of use, the ONLY time I've had trouble getting the shot I want is in front of chain link fencing (drop by flickr and see my zoo pictures...). So while maybe this camera would never be the professional's choice, as an advanced amateur, it works great for me.

Sadly enough, with all the business of moving, etc, the camera got laid away for quite a while. Earlier this summer I unpacked it, with the notion of capturing some "before" and "after" shots of various projects in the house. Sadly, this is what I saw:

That's Darlin' Hubby hiding behind the black box.

You can see my dilemma. Luckily, friend Google had an answer for me: The CCD chip was dying, and Sony would replace it for free! Assuming I could get off my butt and send it in on time (yesterday, 10/2/07 sadly, was the deadline for you googlers out there)...

So I finally sent it off two weeks ago. They sent me a free UPS shipping label, so I put it in a box full of packing paper with a memory stick loaded with the picture above and the previous picture (taken before the chip failed) and a nice note explaining what I was seeing.

Today, my camera is back, apparently fully functional, and this is what the pictures look like now:

YAY! Thanks, Sony, for a free repair and a quick turnaround. Let's hope it stays this way! Especially as we are going to be at this this weekend.