akirlu | Saving Throw (Reply)

I do not usually have to make a saving throw against Oooh! Shiny! I do not pine for a smart phone. (A mobile that worked better as a phone is a different matter.) I especially do not pine for an iPhone, more especially since finding out that it was with that innovation that the wunderkinds at Apphole pioneered shoving battery-dependent technology with non-user-replaceable batteries down the throats of the unwitting public and making them like it. Baking in planned obsolescence because the buyer can't even replace the batteries is evil. Evil, evil, evil. Hence, no e-readers for me, either.

But when I managed to ding the lens of our 3-year-old Panasonic Lumix DMC digital camera, it left a surprisingly large hole in my life. I was quietly devastated.

I don't always take advantage of the fact, but there is a magical power in having a decent camera right there in your pocket, wherever you go. It's the decent + right there that makes it. Right there, means that when something arrests your eye and stabs you through the heart -- a play of light against shadow, a layering of vistas and distance, whatever -- you have a chance of catching it. The chance doesn't always play out, the picture isn't always as brilliant as what's in your eye, but at least there's the possibility of preserving a piece of it. And the Lumix series are definitely decent. The lenses are Leica optics, the zoom surprisingly good, and the whole roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes. Not the smallest or lightest camera out there, but they fit comfortably in a coat or trouser pocket, and the are capable of taking pretty darn good pictures. At least, they are if you haven't knocked a divot of Leica glass out of the lens. Which I had. Hence, the sad. (Yes, it could still take good pictures, but now they all have a fuzzy place in them. I can see it. It's right THERE.)

But happenstantially, at the time I was also just sufficiently flush in the pocket to ~~be dangerous~~ feel okay about taking a flyer on a used Lumix DMC-ZS3 from an Amazon dealer. Despite being a more recent model than my old one, with new fancifications like HD movie capability, the ZS3 is already a discontinued model. When it was still available from Panasonic it went for in the neighborhood of $300-400. Now that it's only available from re-sellers, it looks like the going rate is $600. The Amazon dealer said it was in good used shape, and she wanted just over a hundred bucks. I figured $100 was a good deal, if the camera was indeed in good shape.

It was. It is. Looks like the previous owner hadn't ever taken more than 500 pictures with it . And while I haven't had great light to work with, I've been able to get a few images with it. And it doesn't suck. And I'm back to having a camera that lives in my coat pocket. Definite win. With no fuzzy spots. Still need to figure out the HD movies, tho.