Happy Birthday To Me...and You

Veggie and I just dropped an obscene amount of money at the camera store. On, you guessed it, CAMERAS!!! Yes, that’s cameraS, as in MULTIPLE. Perhaps we’ve gone COMPLETELY INSANE. I don’t know. I don’t really care. I now own TWO NEW CAMERAS!! Can you tell I’m a little excited about this?

So here’s what happened. Today I woke up feeling a bit woozy and my stomach still flimsy, but definitely a step up from yesterday. Plus, the SUN IS OUT IN SEATTLE. This doesn’t happen very often these days. Just yesterday I was remarking on how odd it was to be May 23 and have the heat cranked to 71 degrees and my furry slippers on at 2 in the afternoon. So sun (and the warmth it brings with it) was oh so welcome today. I decided to venture outside with my little family - a first since my fateful trip to the doctor’s office earlier in the week. And with the sun shining and Punkin doing his thing - looking cuter than ever, of course - I grabbed our little point-n-shoot and set about archiving this day in film (or megapixel, but you get the drift).

I think it took me all of 2 snapshots and 15 curses under my breath to declare that it was TIME WE BOUGHT OURSELVES A DECENT CAMERA!!! I was trying to focus on our first blooming roses, those that weren’t dying from dehydration, and the stupid camera kept focusing on the leaves, or the stems, or the FREAKIN’ WALL BEHIND THE ROSES. WTF is up with that? After “wasting” a number of shots on blurry petals (ok, it’s hard to really waste digital photos, I know) I got an idea. Seriously, if you’d been standing next to me you would have seen a little cartoon light bulb go DING right above my head.

I ran inside to find my trusty Canon EOS - and no, that’s not a dSLR or I wouldn’t be complaining about crappy pictures now, would I? No, it’s an old school, film-operated, EOS 630 from the early ’90’s that I “inherited” from my brother back in high school. (Actually, “inherited” isn’t exactly an accurate term - I think my parents bought it from him and then gave it to me for my birthday, typical of my relationship with my brother, but I’m over it).

Flipping to manual mode, I excitedly began taking up-close pictures of the rose blooms, focusing on their minute stamens or never ending curled tunnels of petals. I took some rather perfect shots of Punkin looking over his daddy’s shoulder, and a few of the dog lying in the sun, too. Later on, when I went to remove the used up film and search for a new roll, I discovered it was BLACK AND WHITE. Ok, I’m sure some of those pictures will look fabulous in b/w, especially those of the Punkin. But what I really wanted to capture that day were the colors in the sun and the different shades of the flowers and, well, it was just one more frustration.

So after rediscovering my love for my old camera, but my frustration for film - I mean, when am I really going to get those pictures developed? - I then declared it was TIME WE BOUGHT OURSELVES A DIGITAL SLR!!! I’ve been toying with this idea for a long time now and up until recently I was sure I would never own one until my fairy god mouse dropped one on my doorstep someday. But today I was feeling especially daring and told my husband we HAD TO HAVE ONE and just waited to see Mr. Frugal’s reaction. To my surprise, he whipped out his computer and started looking up camera reviews on CNET! I started to argue my point, about how taking a picture with this piece of crap (our 4 year old Canon Powershot A85) was not really taking pictures because pictures should actually capture REAL LIFE and not some digital interpretation of something that sort of looks like what you saw with your own two eyes. Whereas that camera, my trusty EOS, allowed me to photograph exactly what I was looking at and even capture a tiny, pearly water droplet on the petal of a flower. Now THAT was taking pictures.

Rather than try to rationalize me out of my declaration, Veggie merely replied, “I think we should get a Cannon so we can use your old lenses.” (Ever the frugal-minded one).

So somewhere in the following hours of research and deliberation we came across two options: #1: Buy a full body SLR camera - a cheaper, slightly more compact version of the true dSLR, and without the ability to change out lenses. Or #2: Buy a dSLR and a compact, updated point-n-shoot for slipping in a pocket or purse, on-the-go picture taking when we didn’t want to haul out the big mamma camera. And true to my anti-frugal nature when fulfilling life-long dreams and wishes, I persuasively argued for option #2 - the best of both worlds!

When Veggie surprisingly agreed to option #2 (after a few more hours of research and deliberation and tossing around numbers and upcoming credit card bills and some birthday money from the parents) he then asked me the most shocking question: “Which one should we buy first?”

Well, what did it matter which one we bought first if we were going to buy both? And didn’t Best Buy sell them both anyway, so wouldn’t that be easiest - to just pick them up in one trip? Veggie shook his head, sucked in his breath, and suddenly there I was, sitting next to my husband again, not the strange aberration that had been feeding my greedy inner child just moments before.

We finally agreed to get the dSLR and have fun with it this summer. And just like that we were off to Best Buy, a reluctant Punkin in tow...

TO BE CONTINUED...