Common Sense Everywhere But Not A Thought to Think

I got the camera back. I loaded the pictures, I wrote a blog. I put the card back in the camera, turned it on to make sure my new batteries worked and it beeped with an i in the top screen. Having no idea what the i meant I tried to take a picture the LCD Screen lit up with card full. Funny I deleted all the pictures. So I closed the camera and went to look at the pictures on the disk - the screen lit up No Pictures. Hmm, I opened the camera it beeped showed me the i and said Card Full. If I was on Jeopardy I would have said "what is TV Guide" for full with nothing in it. I did this three or four times with the same results - can we say what is the definition of insanity? I tried formatting the card and still got the same results. I tried reformatting the card, and still got the same results. I tried holding the camera upside down.

Now mind you I didn't have a manual, as this was a hand-me-down from Erika and not Mom. (I got a hand-me-down phone from Mom recently that had a post-it attached to the manual that said battery changed 06-24-96). So I went on line.

total digression - I couldn't get the living room vcr to timer record the other day - I don't usually need the living room as I use the office and the bedroom but on Tuesday I had three things at 9:00 to record. I had been unsuccessful in the past in the living room so I tested it by setting it for two minutes from the time I was doing it to have it record, I turned the VCR off and it did not record. I re-programmed it and left the VCR on it did not record - Again I did not have a book since it was a hand-me-down (trade) with Robin. So I went on line to see if they had a manual on line I could download. They had a manual for sale for $1.67 but the shipping and handling was $5.50. I sent an email to customer service and they replied immediately that you have to hit the timer record button for the VCR to put itself into timer mode.

Olympus had a wonderful site where I could download the manual in PDF format. I recommend this even if you have the manual at home. In PDF I could search "Card Full" and it brought me to each place in the document where those words appeared. Unfortunately they recommended formatting the card. Been there done that. I searched Error Messages for the i and it meant the camera had information for me such as Card Full. This was all so very helpful. The manual came in four documents a quick start guide and manual broken down into 3 49 page sections. So I started reading the quick start guide. The camera has lots of buttons and stuff on the back, before which I had no idea what they meant. I had figured out the basics, change the time to Michigan not Indiana time, turn the flash on, view the pictures. But that only used 2 out of the 8 buttons. The quick start guide showed card set up as what I had thought was a trash can with the lid up, I had assumed this was delete. In a way it is, it allows you to delete all pictures on the Card, there weren't any but I tried anyway - still didn't work. It also allows you to format the card in the camera, hitherto I had formatted on the PC, so I tried that - still no luck. It was getting close to time to leave (if Robin was on time) but I really wanted to take pictures. So I looked at the top screen for any information and I noticed an SHQ in the corner. I did a search on that, this indicated that I was storing High Quality photos and you can store less of these on the card. So working with the manual I figured out how to change this and lo and behold my card was no longer full. This would be common sense. But now I am home and I have time to think.

So I go back into the set up, on SQ - the lowest quality picture my camera shows that I have room for 160 pictures. This number is smaller than it used to be back when it was working fine for the higher quality pictures. So I go back into the menu and set it for HQ which is the medium quality pictures and my camera says I have room for 588 pictures, dare I try SHQ which totally freaked out the camera this afternoon. Of course I dare, 294 pictures. So why...oh who cares, it works. I now have a manual and I may even read it. In the mean time Deer Acres pictures are up on Yahoo, and later I will tell you what a rip off tourist con it is.