need help: AffineTransformOp

I would greatly appreciate any help you can give.

I have a PlanarImage that I need to rotate. When I try to use the
AffineTransform Op, I get a java.awt.image. ImagingOpExcept ion. This
was my approach: I converted the PlanarImage to a BufferedImage, and
then constructed an appropriate AffineTransform Op and used the its
filter() method.

//--start code
BufferedImage srcImage, destImage;
AffineTransform rotation;
AffineTransform Op rotationOp;
RenderingHints hints;
WritableRaster destRaster;
Raster srcRaster;
double theta;
int xRotate, yRotate;//coordinates for rotation center

//rotation operation
xRotate = N/2;
yRotate = N/2;
theta = 15.0;
hints = new RenderingHints ( RenderingHints. KEY_INTERPOLATI ON,
RenderingHints. VALUE_INTERPOLA TION_BILINEAR );
rotation = AffineTransform .getRotateInsta nce ( theta*Math.PI/180.0,
xRotate, yRotate);
rotationOp = new AffineTransform Op ( rotation, hints );

//source and destination rasters
srcImage = pi.getAsBuffere dImage();
srcRaster = srcImage.getRas ter();
destRaster = rotationOp.crea teCompatibleDes tRaster
(srcImage.getRa ster() );

//perform the rotation
rotationOp.filt er(srcRaster, destRaster);
//--end code

This compiles, but at runtime, I get the following exception:
java.awt.image. ImagingOpExcept ion: Unable to transform src image
at java.awt.image. AffineTransform Op.filter(Affin eTransformOp.ja va:336)

I am developing on Linux, and I get the same problem with both
Blackdown JDK 1.4.1 and Sun JDK 1.4.2.01.

Any suggestions for how I can rotate this image by an arbitrary angle?

Thanks in advance,
mike