I found this little story over at Natalie Solent's site, about a man who wrecked his digital camera by dunking it in a lake, and now claims to like the results.

Web designer (and high-tech camera designer) Bill Simon comments:

This is classic. In sales it is called turning a bug into a feature.

Okay. Now he has a "magic" camera.

Big deal. All he can take are "magic" pictures. But with a program like Paint Shop Pro, I can make any of my normal pictures as magical as I wish and I still get normal pictures.

This guy doesn't want to face the fact that he wrecked an $800 camera. But with this hype the camera will become worth whatever the new age world can afford...Say, $250,000. So I guess he gets the last laugh.

Yeah, I saw the 'magic' pictures on some website (I forget the URL) too. I can do that with Photoshop filters to ordinary pictures. (Brag brag.) I can't believe he's hyping this when it's obvious that he just has a broken camera. I'll bet you that soon it will freeze up and refuse to work altogether.

Seems to me you're both being a bit harsh. Yeah, he dumped his camera in the water, and it's now no good for conventional pictures. But what's fascinating to me is the way it produces its special effects without intervention by the operator. Like the random melodies produced by pentatonic-tuned wind chimes, you may know the basic conditions, but you don't know exactly what's coming next. To say "I can duplicate that using Photoshop" misses the point. (Yes, I could duplicate them. Yes, I could create pictures like them. But do I have the artistic ablilty and judgment to create these pictures? Just because I can copy Shakespeare doesn't mean that I can write plays like his.) I think it's a clever hack, which I might pay (a little) extra for if it was offered as an option. It's also a terrific example of taking lemons and making lemonade out of them. Would I pay $800 for a camera that only did this? No. But if the same thing happend to me, I'd probably keep it around... just to see what happend.

By the way, here's the URL: http://www.brucedale.com/Farrell%20Home%20page.htm