Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Camera-less Today I drove to Pineville (a good 45 minute drive) to a camera shop to have my bounce flash and Nikon D200 looked at. The bounce flash was dropped many months ago, breaking the bulb inside it, and I've been limping along every since. The auto focus just stopped working on the D200 around the same time and I've been manually focusing ever since, sometimes it's handy to have both. I figured since baby #2 was joining us in a few months it might be a good time to look into getting everything fixed and tuned up.

Southern Photo happens to be the only authorized Nikon repair shop in North Carolina. I learned today that they might be taking advantage of that situation. I waited for an hour to see what was up with my camera and then they finally came out and told me that they were going to need more time. They needed to disassemble it to see exactly what the issue was. And also that they are backed up 2-4 weeks. The flash repair man only works at night so I had to leave that as well.

They charged me $25 total just to give me an estimate on the repairs, which I am anxious about. They couldn't even give me a ballpark dollar figure of what to expect, which was disconcerting. These cameras have lots of small parts, things that can easily break or malfunction. Take that and add a potential monopoly on the repair work and there's the potential for a hefty price tag. I'm not speculating at this point, but I'm also not expecting them to call me back and tell me it's going to cost $50 to fix everything either.

So in the meantime I'm trying to figure out what to do. I can't possibly go a month without a photo camera of some sort. We have an old film camera that I could knock the dust off and use, if I can find it. The film alone could get expensive over the course of a month, plus it could be fun as well. I also have an old point & shoot that I could try to get something decent out of, but it's old and it doesn't do too well in poor lighting conditions. For some reason I'm not thrilled about the idea of either of those.

I've also been eyeing the Panasonic LX3 for some time now. It's basically a point & shoot camera on steroids, with full manual mode. I'd drool on it no doubt if I had one. It would be really great to have around with the baby because it's far more portable than my SLR. Also, it's one of those cameras that are you comfortable handing to someone else to snap a family photo with. SLR's are notoriously intimidating for most people and 9 times out of 10 the photos turn out blurry. And that reason right there is why I can count the number of family photos we have on one hand. Plus the quality and control would be very close to what I can get out of my SLR under normal conditions. I could probably go on another couple paragraphs about the benefits of the camera but what I really need is an outside opinion.

Is this a sign? Is my old camera telling me it's time to get him a buddy? Is it time for me to actually talk to my wife about this all first before writing a full blog about it? I felt it was more important to ask the Internet (minus my wife) first to get a fiscally non-biased answer.

So Internet, what do you think?

UPDATE: For some really good examples of what this camera can actually do check out these photos from one of my favorite photo blogs. Enjoy! http://tinyurl.com/ykrjjo8