Yesterday was my birthday, turned 28. I think that the only reason 30 is such a big age for people is because other people make it a big deal for them. One thing I noticed this year is how everyone started saying to me “30 is just 2 years away!” And I’m like, well geez, who cares? But you know if I have to hear this next year and rolling into my 30th year, I could certainly understand why some people might start feeling depressed about turning 30. It kind of sucks having everyone make something a big deal that it isn’t.
Overall a fairly good birthday though. I don’t like parties or anything so that didn’t happen. Got into a deal with my sister and my brother for no presents on birthdays since we all have such a hard time for christmas already. So I don’t get many birthday presents. I did get $50 from my best friend and $75 from my mother, and another $25 gift card at best buy from my friend’s mom, and a $5 gift certificate from my mom at best buy, so I plan on combining all that to buy myself a good quality camera. I will probably buy the camera from Amazon or something and then use the gift cards at best buy to buy 1GB of flash memory to hold all the pictures on. I’ve heard most people say 500MB is big enough, but I wanna be safe… I don’t want to be feeling like i need to buy another memory card anytime in the future… this is it. As for the camera… I’m not really sure what to get. Right now the big debat is as to whether I should get a decent sized camera or whether I should get a smaller pocket-sized camera. Both have their ups and downs. Smaller camers are easy to carry around, I never would have to worry about it, just stick it in my pocket and I’m good. This is also good on some level since I don’t particularly like looking like I have a lot of stuff hanging around me. I like being inconspicuous. On the other hand, I hate the tininess of the pocket cameras… There is something nice about a decent sized camera with a nice grip to it. It feels good in the hands. Plus, I already have a phone and wallet in my pocket, and sometimes GPS device… chances are a camera would be too much to add to my many gizmos in my pocket. (We also don’t include stuff that I don’t always carry around but could in the Nintendo DS and my PDA). The small cameras don’t always seem to have the best features on them either… optical zoom especially. And to be honest one thing I really want out of this camera is a camera that will last me 5 or 6 years… so in that I want a camera that has manual controls, good megapixels and a good zoom so that I know I won’t feel outdated…
I have the small camera and the mid-size camera picked out my larger ones are between a Cannon SP2 I think it is called… it has like 12x optical and 5MP, it has a nicer grip IMO and an on-camera panorama stitch helper which is nice because I love panoramic pictures! The other is a Panasonic FZ7… it saves in TIFF, while the cannon saves only JPEG and it is also a little smaller and about $5 cheaper. I think it also has a built in recharabeable battery. Most reviews I’ve read prefer AA batteries instead of a built-in one because it is easier to replace while traveling. But to be honest I don’t see this as a big deal> I don’t travel much and not having to deal with batteries is a huge plus in my book. The down side of the Panasonic is that it doesn’t get quite as good of reviews, they don’t have a proven name brand for cameras, the grip doesn’t feel as nice, and it doesn’t feel quite as sturdy as the Cannon does. So even if I decided on the bigger cameras, I have a lot of choices to resolve.
I will hopefully get this narrowed down further if a decent sale pops up.