Happy happy!

Mine mine mine, all mine.

This little baby is in it's box right now, awaiting me to free it and begin taking some pictures!

J. and I RARELY treat ourselves to anything not in the budget. And right now, we can think of at least 30 other things this money could be used to purchase, but you know what? Sometimes you just gotta live in the moment. Just do what you want, instead of what you have to do! We have been pinching pennies for K's therapy, and he has been working 60 hours a week, so there is a bit of extra in the checking at the moment, and when our little point and shoot digital started acting funny the other day, has been sucking battery power for months now and vacation looming - we threw caution to the wind, and came home with this today.

Not the digital SLR either of us wanted, but when we really sat down and evaluated the features, and how many of them we would really honestly use, we couldn't justify paying twice as much and only using the features we could get on this smaller camera. This one is 8.1 mps, plenty for what we use it for, has the zoom(15X Plus 25X digital zoom) I want without having to buy extra lenses, plus it has the sport feature for action shots and a hard drive memory to take repetetive shots, as well as use in case your memory card gets full or, (gasp) for get it. It's light and the features are easy to navigate. The lens is a Carl Zeiss, which must be special because it is copy righted and they make a big deal out of the name on the information. (see how much I know!) It has image stabilizer, and a video capability in HD if we want. I am sure there are dozens more features I haven't even read about yet. But these were the ones that were important to us.

We got 7 good years, for the $200 we spent on the other point and shoot. Can't beat that. We'll keep it around until it dies completely. Whenever we buy something that is more expensive I extrapolate the cost over the length of time we will use it. Makes it seem so much more reasonable. We had J's old Minolta SLR out last night. Man. Memories. Most of our dating memories we captured through that camera's lens. He bought that in 1984. The kids were amazed. Film? What's film? We are really raising a generation that will never know what developing film was like. K was 7 when we bought the digital. So, she really doesn't remember my old point and shoot film camera. What do you mean you can't see the picture after you take it? Man, it is heavy too! J used to walk with that thing around his neck everywhere when we met. Now I have to shove the camera in his hand and get him to take some pictures. He knows all that lens stuff, and never uses it. Our camera has been set on manual and never moved since the day we got it. My goal is to learn a bit more about some of the shutter settings, and things to maybe take some more in depth shots.

So off I go....to hang the laundry, fold some clothes, finish a birthday project for a friend, vacuum...and oh yeah - play with my camera! Which do you think I will do first?