New Camera is Better Bargain

I had another good lesson in economics a couple of weeks ago. For some time, my trusty Cyber-Shot DSC-WX80 had a problem – the camera equivalent of retinitis, I think. On the right-center of the image was a small blurred spot.

At first I thought it was on the lens, so I cleaned the lens. Nope. It persisted. So I did what any photographer would do – I took it to the local Sony Service Center to have them check it out.

Two nice fellows there – Leo and Chris – took a good look at the camera, pressed this and that, snapped a few shots, showed it to a couple more service people, and came to the conclusion that it was inside the camera. Maybe moisture, maybe mold. Who knows?

The only way to really find out would be to open it up.

If the camera were inside the one-year guarantee, it would cost me c. $4.00 to fix. Otherwise, it would cost about $94.00 or something like that, and I’d have to wait four to six weeks. Well, the camera was almost two years old, so the $4.00 fix was out of the question; I told them to go ahead and fix it for the higher price and I’d go get a cheap backup camera in the meantime to use during an upcoming trip to Las Vegas.

Leo came up with a better solution – get a new camera; it’ll be cheaper in the long run to do that, in the area of about $169 or so. Chris looked up their Sony model DCS-WX220, which was the newer replacement for the one I had. He went on the Internet and found one on sale at Best Buy for $149.

Best Buy, here I come. My new camera has all the features of the old one, with an 18.2 megapixel picture (compared to 16.2), and a 10x zoom lens (compared to 8x). The only thing is that the new camera is black, and the old one is red (a color I really liked ... oh well).

See? Service techs, when they’re local and not talking to you on the phone from a foreign country, are a great help. Kudos to Sony!