No focus

Remember about a month ago when Verizon made me want to spit nails? Well, according to my contract I was eligible for an upgrade on the 17th (of September). So last Thursday I thought I’d go into the Verizon store to look around, because in my mind it made more sense to look before I planned on walking out with one, just so I didn’t feel like I had to take the first thing. I could touch a few phones, go home, think about it over the weekend, and then go back Monday. Thursday I was also running a ton of errands, and happened to be out by Verizon Fuckery Branch when I was doing them, so I thought “I’m going to go in here and look at them, and then go to the Verizon store by my house on Monday to buy one, muhuwahahahah!”… except that all three of their parking spaces were full (seriously, who builds a store on the CORNER of 34th and Archer and then only puts in three parking spaces? PUT DOWN THE CRACK PIPE). So, pissily, I drove on and by the time I got back to my side of town had cooled off enough to go ahead and stop by the Verizon store in my ghetto ‘hood…

… where I walked in and was promptly greeted and talked to like an actual human being. Dude asked me what phone I was using now, what I didn’t like about it, what I wanted it to be able to do, and then he put out a few recommendations with one really strong leader that would not do that thing where by the time you get it out into the parking lot, there are like six new versions already. He looked up my account, told me I had a credit for a new phone case, but that it expired on the 15th (this was the 13th). I laughed and laughed and said that was more than funny, since I couldn’t get a new phone until the 17th. He immediately said, “yeah, let me see what I can do about that.”…. and was not only able to go ahead and give me my upgrade a few days earlier, but I got a free (tough) case for it. He was able to transfer everything to my new phone, got me set up, and I walked out with a new Droid Razr. It is shiny!

The only problem I’m seeming to have with it is that in my favorite camera app, Vignette (I love it because of all the filters and borders), I can’t seem to get the camera to focus. It focuses fine in the actual camera app that came with the phone, but not in Vignette… unless I’m pretty far away from something (like the first picture in this post, wherein I was about three feet away from the plant). I didn’t notice it then, but I did notice it in the second photo. The lake looks great, but Jenn’s fingers and the drinks almost look a little pixelated – I was about two feet away, maybe. And then if you click to go to the Seder Plate photo, it’s not in focus AT ALL. For that one I was maybe about 18 inches away from the plate.

Like I’ve said, this is clearly some setting in Vignette, not the camera, since the camera works just fine with the standard app. Now, I can take a photo with the basic app, import the photo into Vignette, and apply frames or filters to it, and THEN upload it… but by that time the ice cream from Sweet Dreams would have melted, and really, that’s just ridiculous. I’m still searching around online but am not finding anyone else having this problem, which to me says “Operator Error”… but last night while watching TV I spent about half an hour playing with every.single.setting and could NOT get it to focus on things close — no matter how many times I adjusted the macro and closeup settings. The cat on my lap still came out blurry.

So. Clearly there’s a learning curve here! This also explains the lack of photos in the last few days as I’m trying to figure this thing out!