My First DSLR Camera

Monday, 25 Oct 10, 2.17pm at home

Hello diary..
I just bought a new camera few days ago. It's my first DSLR camera! My old pocket Sony camera was broken last year so it's a good chance to upgrade my camera to a better one. I love my new camera so much now! However, I had an unpleasant experience when buying this camera.

I bought it in a shop where I used to buy electronics stuff. I know one person there very well and he always gave me very good price. On Saturday, me and my hubby went there to buy other things and suddenly we wanted to buy a camera. The person whom I know was not there, the other salesman who said that he knows me serving us. This salesman talked so much till we fell in love with this camera. He also kept pushing us to buy accessories for camera. Me and my hubby were like hypnotized by this salesman. We just bought all that he recommended. We swiped the card, signed on the receipt, and we did not check on the stuffs we bought at all! We said thank you and left the shop.

Soon after we left the shop, I had a bad feeling. I told my hubby that I wanted to ask other shops about the price of the product we bought. Some of the shops gave us cheaper price. We already felt cheated but we were still fine. On the way home, we kept saying that this was our first time buying expensive camera so we deserved to enjoy some luxurious, to console our guilt. It worked, we were happily carrying our new camera home.

At home, I quickly checked on Canon website to learn more about the real price and I was happy since I bought it around US$100 cheaper than the suggested retail price. I opened the box and saw the camera, this was when I felt there was something wrong. The box and the camera show different product series. I quickly googled it and found out that actually both are the same product, one is the international product name and the other one is the Japan's one. Mine is the Japan version. I felt relieved. Then I inserted the battery into the camera and saw the language was all Japanese! The manual book and the warranty card were all in Japanese too! The worst part is, the warranty card says 'This warranty is only valid in Japan'. The shop indeed said that it has 1 year warranty with the shop, but not with Canon! We just suddenly remembered it after we were home. This is really not funny at all! I know some Japanese words but it literally means that I only know SOME words. We are very stupid in operating camera so we desperately need the Manual book. We also bought the camera bag for US$50, the bag with no brand name, the bag with awful appearance, and the bag that we did not even look at before buying!

At that night, we were so pissed off and we decided to come to the shop again for a product exchange. We wanted the international version with English language and with authorized warranty from Canon. However, we slowly changed our mind. My hubby ate one bowl of kuaci (Sun flower seeds) to gain his patience. I carefully checked on websites on how to get the English instruction book. I got the English manual book when my hubby finished half bowl of the kuaci, one problem was solved! On the manual book, I also found how to change the language in camera to English, and I managed to change it! Two problems were solved, my hubby just finished his whole bowl of kuaci. The kuaci-method worked well. He was really in a much more patient mood. About the warranty issue, we decided not to bother, we just pray and hope that my camera will be fine. We knew that we can't argue with that salesman, we already agreed and signed the receipt which actually showed the product name of the camera that we bought. The shop also told us about the shop warranty and we unconsciously agreed with that (The salesman said 'For any problem with the camera, come back to this shop, we will solve the problem for you, 1 year warranty, no need to worry'). Perhaps we paid US$100 cheaper for this reason. We take our lesson, this is HK, we should be more careful about everything, don't trust people easily.

Yesterday I spent half day to learn how to use the camera. I followed the step-by-step instruction on the manual book but I could not move forward from section 'Take picture with Auto Mode' which is the very very most basic step! You know why? Even with auto-mode, the pictures that I took were always blurred!! I kept changing the setting but I still couldn't fix this blurry problem for 4 hours. I fixed and cleaned my short-sighted glasses many times to check if my eye-vision was already worsen now. I was wondering if my new camera had short-sighted vision like me because the pictures turned out good when I used it to take picture of an object which was nearby. Does my camera also need my thick glasses? Soon after thinking about this, I tried to fixed the lens of the camera and suddenly I heard a sound *click!* when fixing the lens. Yes! I can take clear pictures now! :D I am happy enough to take pictures without blur, the next step is learning how and when to use the other modes. Phew! Long way to go..

Bye, diary..

-Abbie-