Death Comes for the Optio

from the depths, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

There was but one (glaring) design flaw in my waterproof Optio WPi: it sunk.

Several weeks ago the inevitable finally happened. The camera succumbed to the depths of a Central Texas river, laudably in the service of chasing down a loose beer. I realized almost immediately that I had forgotten to check if the strap was on my wrist before flopping off my tube, but the thing was nowhere in sight.

Even after struggling upstream, enlisting the help of some nerd wearing goggles, and then diving around for half an hour myself, it was no use. Two and a half years, 10,000 frames, a lot of annoyed friends, and several hours worth of low-fi audio recordings ... as well as crappy image quality, a poor auto-focus system, sluggish shutter response, and terrible color reproduction.

The last surviving underwater pictures turned out to be from the Turtle Pond at UT, which kind of puts the couple hundred dollar loss in perspective.

BONUS: Turtle Pond fiction?