Way back (about a week ago) when I was still in love with my Fujifilm FinePix HS50 digital camera.

In expectation of our family’s trip to Walt Disney World for the Disney Social Media Moms conference, I splurged and bought myself a new “big girl” camera for the trip. I took a lot of time searching for just the right camera. I wanted something with incredible zoom, HD video capabilities and the ability to plug in an external microphone for the times I want to shoot video in noisy locations at Disneyland. When I stumbled upon the Fujifilm FinePix HS50 digital camera bundle on Costco’s website, I felt like my prayers had been answered. The camera had everything I was looking for and then some. I was elated to be able to get such an incredible camera just in time for our trip and my summer kick-off media event at Disneyland.

I shot mostly photos on the camera for the first six days of our trip, as I didn’t bring my laptop with me to unload the memory card and wanted to save room for as many pictures as possible. I will admit that the camera took great photographs and the zoom is pretty amazing. On the last day of our trip, however, I decided it was time to start shooting video on the camera and left my trusty Flip camera in our room when we set out for Disney adventure. Soon, however, my feeling for my camera changed. My son Brandon was provided not one but TWO magical moments that day by Disney Cast Members, moments I wanted to capture on video and couldn’t get on video with my iPhone because it was full. Forty seconds into shooting each video I tried to capture, a “storing” message would come upon on the screen and then a big red “Write Error!” message would appear. I hoped against hope that some way the videos would have made it on to the card, but knew full well that they would be incomplete files and they wouldn’t be there.

Alas, when I got home, I looked and the videos were not on the card. Once I had a day or two to recuperate from the trip, I called Costco’s concierge service and explained the problem. The very nice associate walked through a number of trouble shooting strategies with me, including changing to an entirely different card, restoring the camera to its factory settings, etc. After about 30 minutes he and I came to the realization that the camera was the problem. The camera I splurge and spent $549 on in celebration of my family’s trip of a lifetime was the reason I didn’t get the precious videos of my son. I am sick. Just sick.

I tweeted to Fuji and got the response of “ouch” and send them an email. And tell them what? Your camera made me miss out on precious memories I could have captured on my three-year-old Flip camera? Oh, and you bet, “OUCH!” I was too disgusted to write an email so I called and was told I could send in the camera for repair. Thanks, but no thanks, Fuji! I’m returning the camera to Costco this week and now without a camera for the upcoming media event I will be attending at Disneyland Thursday and Friday. An event in which I was depending upon using my new camera.

I always want to tell my readers the good and bad and feel it was my duty to tell you about this camera in the case that you are looking for a new camera for your summer adventures. And yes, I know I should have tested out the camera shooting video before I left (I did take photos with it), but I suppose I just didn’t dream that the camera wouldn’t be able to shoot video! 

Admittedly, I really did my homework before buying this camera and read all the reviews and watched videos shot on the camera on Youtube and no one else seems to have experienced this problem. The question I suppose I have now is did I get a lemon of is this problem indicative of this model overall. I’ll probably never know because I just don’t know if it would be wise for me to risk giving this same camera or another Fuji camera a shot.