Oh, crap.

My basically brand new camera broke last night.

Well, the camera didn't break - just the tripod housing. I went to take the photos of my abalone spiral necklace, and when I tried to mount the camera on the tripod, the camera completed one turn and got a little tighter, and then got loose again.

My response was: huh?!?

So naturally, I repeated the procedure about 50 times, with the same result - every time I let go of the camera, it fell off the tripod. Clearly, this was never gonna work (but I'm a slow learner...)

So I went ahead and took the pictures without the tripod, balancing my elbows on the table, holding my breath, and praying that the pictures wouldn't be blurry. And they turned out OK. But if I had had less light, or the aperture settings had been different, I think I would have been in trouble.

So I took the basically brand new camera and the tripod to the camera shop first thing this morning, where they pronounced the tripod housing to be stripped. And the fixing of said tripod housing to be not covered under the warranty (naturally.)

And just exactly how does this tripod housing get replaced, you might ask. Well, the camera gets mailed to Fuji, and they fix it. In 3-4 weeks.

3-4 WEEKS.

The camera shop guy suggested I get a disposable camera to use between now and then.

Yeah, that'll work.

'Spect I'll be doing a lot of relisting in my Etsy shop for the next few weeks, since there won't be any picture-taking going on around here.

Crap.