Tag: repair

When Technical Support is No Support at All

Expertise, Gear, Photography, Tools

Happy New Year all! Playing with those Christmas gifts? Here’s the story of one of mine.

Any hobby that relies on technology will eventually bring you to a point where you need to contact Technical Support. I’m pretty savvy and can solve most technical things on my own. I frankly prefer to do that, as I learn better that way how to avoid the problem next time.

I had a situation recently though that made it necessary to seek help. I purchased a piece of equipment before Christmas through my favourite telescope shop. The item was made by SkyWatcher, a reputable, well-known and trusted brand. Sadly, the item did not work at all out of the box and despite my best efforts, I could not solve the problem. So I contacted technical support, first at the shop where I purchased it, then through SkyWatcher. Here’s what happened…

Continue reading “When Technical Support is No Support at All” →

I Can See Clearly Now

Life

If you are reading this on the day it is released, then I am or will have been in surgery for a cataract today. It’s the ultimate irony for a photographer to lose their vision, but also a reality for many of us who are older. In my case, it is doubly frustrating. Other eye issues I’ve had since 2014 mean that the eye being operated on today is my only “good” eye.

I’m titling this in the hope that this will be the outcome. Of course, every surgeon has to apprise you of the risks, which even for routine, production line surgery like this are still somewhat frightening. Bleeding, swelling, damage to other eye structures, infection, reaction to the materials that the new lens is made of, and on and on. But it is “routine” surgery, sometimes even performed with the aid of computer guided instruments. Hope that computer doesn’t have a crash today.

Continue reading “I Can See Clearly Now” →

We Can Fix That

Interesting Stuff, Photography, Tools

Support TicketI’m becoming more puzzled and concerned about new products released by hardware and software companies that invariably get poor reviews and need to be “fixed”.  We’ve seen that lately in the Apple 15 inch MacBook Pro (which has been “fixed” by the 16 inch released Nov 15/19).  We’ve seen that in Skylum’s Luminar 3 (which as of this writing, has been “fixed” by Luminar 4, released Nov 19/19).  We’ve also seen that very recently in Adobe’s Photoshop for iPad, which as of this writing, has not yet been “fixed”, after having been essentially trashed on its release in Oct.  First-release mirrorless cameras from Canon and Nikon both needed firmware “updates” (i.e. fixes).  And lastly, ON1’s Photo Raw 2020, released in October, seems to have a bug that causes it to do what should be background file management tasks in the middle of a photo edit, preventing any meaningful work from getting done.  As of this writing, that has not been “fixed”.

There seem to be four main factors contributing to these problems. Continue reading “We Can Fix That” →