It's been a long, long time since I've written anything on this blog about a camera, especially a new one. Well, I guess I can't claim this is a post about a new camera per se. I'm actually writing about a camera I've written about here before, quite a long time ago; one I've owned for about 13 years now... the Fujifilm Finepix W1, the first commercial digital 3D camera. I still own that thing.
It's currently taking a little spa vacation down in the United States. The Seattle area, specifically. When it comes home, it will be able to see in infrared. Yeah. If they can actually do it, in a few weeks, I should have a camera that shoots infrared pictures in 3D. Now won't that be cool.
How did this come about? Well, back in 2010, I bought the very last of the new, dedicated-camera cameras I've ever bought; the Canon Powershot S100. Sometime around 2014 or so, I got a Samsung S4 as my phone, and the picture and video quality was so good that I just stopped carrying cameras around anymore. So the S100 has been pretty much just sitting around collecting dust for eight years or so.
I've had three different P&S digital cameras reconverted to infrared photography over the years, all Canon Powershot models... first a G1, then an S70, and finally an S80. For a year or two I've been toying with the idea of getting that done to the S100 and putting it back to work, getting better photos and much better infrared video. The best the S80 can manage is 640 x 480 video, which is rather pathetic by current standards. So I started looking around, found Life Pixel out in Washington State. The S100 is one of the models they list, so recently I saved up the fee (more or less) and started the process...
...And then I remembered the old W1, which, too, has been sitting around doing nothing for a few years now. And I went, Hey... what if I could shoot infrared in 3D...? So I asked them, and they said they'd give it a whirl. So I set that up instead.
So. Last Wednesday, I went over to the Canada Post outlet in the local Shopper's Drug Mart and bought a box suitable for the purpose. I came home, did the customs form online, went back over, and sent the thing off to Washington. That was about five in the afternoon. I sent it express, insured it for $300, and got a tracking number.
Boy, am I glad I did.
Thursday morning I checked the tracking number. I saw this...
In other words, less than two hours later, Canada Post attempted to deliver a package, bound for Seattle, in North York, where it was delivered from. I was horrified. I could just imagine some yutz across the street from me, strolling into Shopper's Drug Mart with some package pickup card, and wandering home with my W1. Hey, jackpot, free camera! Ooo, and it's 3D!! Now I knew odds were it was me they were actually trying to deliver it to, mistaking the return address for the delivery address, so I checked my door and then my mailbox... Nothing, no card. So, on my break, over I went to Canada Post.
The same woman who'd served me the evening before was there, and I asked her to check the tracking number. She looked it up and confirmed the worst; I hadn't made a mistake. She said, "They've left a card for delivery."
"It's supposed to be going to Washington in the United States."
"...Oh. Right. Yes. Uh..."
She gave me the 1-800 number for Canada Post. So, back out in the car in the parking lot, I called them up. Luckily I got through fairly directly. Gave them the tracking number. They got the gist pretty quickly and gave me the delivery number from the card I never got. "It's probably been misdirected and returned to the same location for pickup," the guy advised me. So, back into the building.
Sure as shootin', there it was, on the shelf. It had probably never even left the building. I'm pretty sure this woman just put it into deliveries instead of outgoing mail. Uh-huh... Sigh.
There was a lot of talk about getting a refund and starting over, but I said, "Can't we just put this thing in outgoing mail and be done with it?" So she scribbled out the delivery card number pasted on the side of the box and did just that.
On Canada Post's tracking site, the package was now listed as "Delivered". Happy little dot crossing the screen, little green checkmark, tah tah tah-tahhhh! Right. What a farce.
I fretted about that most of Friday until the site updated the information, and suddenly my "delivered" package was out in Mississauga for sorting. Shortly afterward, it was dispatched to the "destination country". After that, the tracking info was coming in courtesy of Uncle Sam. It cleared customs in Illinois on Sunday. At that point, I stopped sweating it. No updates till today, when they came pretty much all at once. It was out for delivery this morning, and delivered (to the right ZIP code; I checked) this afternoon.
So, presumably, Life Pixel has my W1, and the surgery can begin. They boast a typical turnaround time of 5-10 business days, so if they actually can convert the W1 (which still remains to be seen), I ought to have it back by the end of June. Hopefully CBSA will accept that the camera was only temporarily out of the country for refurb work and not actually a foreign purchase they need to charge me duty on. It happened once with one of the cameras I got converted in Melbourne, and they really dinged me.
Anyway, this represents the first adventure with a camera I've had in quite a long time. I hope it goes according to plan and that this time next month, the W1 is happily back out in the field, doing amazing new work neither it nor I ever dreamed of back when I bought it in 2009.
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