The internal war

Last night I spent 2.5 hours on the web researching digital cameras. The wealth of options made my brain numb. Initially, all I wanted was a slim little number that would fit in a pocket. I had previsouly perused all the models in stores, picking them up for feel and thought I'd found it. But then as I read tons of reviews, many people had had problems with the LCD cracking and stores refusing to honor the warranty, so...

I went back to square one and found my photograph self taking the lead. I would want manual focus and exposure options. And better performance in low light. Customizable white balance. More megapixels. A broader zoom. By midnight, I was looking at cameras that more resembled my film SLR than the slim rectangular boxes I'd started with.

Here's the catch: I don't like my film camera anymore. No, that's not true. My film camera is sadly too busted to be worth repairing after more than a decade of heavy, and somewhat vigorous use. The hand-me-down that took its place a couple years ago has features and absences that annoy me. These days I'm also fairly broke, so I just haven't much felt like shooting with it and incurring print and development costs.

All I wanted was something that would enable me to put more pictures on my blog (without stealing them from other sources), but I find it near impossible to separate out the shooter in me. If I took a great photo on my digital, I would surely want to print it. If the camera was good enough, I wouldn't bother to lug my film camera on trips. However, if the digital camera is nearly as large as the film version, I probably wouldn't carry it around as much which was the initial point of getting a slim model. The struggle continues unabated.

Anybody have any camera suggestions or ones to avoid?


On an unrelated note, yesterday I found a ladybug on my chair's arm. It's hanging out on the window today with a heavily snow-covered world beyond. Winter seems to have skipped its dreary prelude this year.