I dropped my camera on Thanksgiving. It turns out expensive cameras don’t stand up to physical abuse as well as I might have expected. I look down and I see pieces. My heart breaks. Then I realize the pieces are just the camera and the battery which popped out. For a moment, I had hope. But when I put the battery back in and powered it on with dread, it didn’t take long to see that the camera couldn’t focus any more. A camera that can’t focus isn’t worth much.
On the positive side, it means I get to go shopping for an all new, better than ever camera. I found it with the Minolta Dimage A1 5MP.
This is such a sweet camera. 5 mega pixels, 7 x optical zoom, manual focus control. It doesn’t have the split body design of my old Nikon Coolpix 995, but even the Nikons don’t have that design any more. It must not have been very popular.
I also picked up a 512 MB Compact Flash Card. Does anybody know if the faster Compact Flash cards are worth the extra price tag? I like the thought of not having to wait so long for my camera to finish writing to the card, but it sounds like voodoo. I’m not at all sure that it would be a noticeable difference. I went cheap this time around, but at 5 mega pixels, I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up buying a few more cards to go along with the few I have.
I can’t wait to get it. I was tempted to pick it up in the store when I went to make sure I liked the feel of it. It was $200 more in the store than on Amazon though (Amazon’s price is seriously awesome!!!), and while I’m impatient, that’s just too much spend for the instant gratification.
Update: I did manage to get a few Crappy Pictures before breaking the camera.