I’ve started doing research into cameras – finally going to upgrade the ol’ Kodak. It’s well-past time, really, but I like to get my money’s worth. How did I do?
Well, the camera was a $150 Black Friday special at Wal-Mart. Add in anything I’ve spent on a tripod, battery charger, memory cards, and that semi-functional flash diffuser, and my equipment investment still can’t be more than $250. And that’s it for all my picture-taking for nearly four years now. That’s just over $60/year; effectively $5 a month.
$5 a month to have this in my life:
(Click for Samples of Pretty since Ought-7)
Bargain of the frakking century. Practically an insult to the amount of love I have for this hobby that I’ve sunk so LITTLE money into it. That is going to change now, although this is not the moment I buy into a DSLR and start dumping thousands on lenses. I’m upgrading to what is probably the highest-end non-SLR; still compact, still basic, still ready to fire up and shoot if I’m too lazy to compose and adjust, but a big upgrade in all other respects.
From what I can tell, Kodak cameras aren’t really taken seriously by people who take cameras seriously. But I decided to look up old reviews of the model I bought just to see what folks had to say.
Turns out that, at the $150 price point, they were relatively positive. It’s regularly described as a good “second camera”, meaning your first is the El-Cheapo All-Automatic, whereas this one graduates you into the world of limited manual control and better image quality for those who can coax it out. And that’s exactly what it has been for me – that good, second camera that helped me evolve. I think I got a hell of a lot more out of it than most.
All this means I have very high hopes for the new one.
I know that digital IS the “now” (as opposed to the future) but it makes me a little concerned. Back in the old days you bought a camera, bought film, took shots and the camera probably lasted you 20 years. It seems that with everything being tech now maybe it’s a lot easier to spend a lot more, a lot more often, no?
I know that film cost money and developing cost money but printing at home with ink canisters is a lot MORE expensive, no?
And, in my limited experience, every digital print I’ve had made at a CVS or on-line at Kodak.com comes out looking pretty weak (when they look FANTASTIC on-line.)
So what’s the skinny in all of those regards?
I think it really depends on what you did with pictures then as opposed to now. Since I didn’t know enough to go into the darkroom back in the day, It used to be that I would drop my little film canisters off at the local whatever, and print ALL of them (because I couldn’t see them otherwise), and they all came out looking kind of blah, because I was a crappy photographer. On a per-unit basis, printing at home is a little pricier than that, but I have the luxury of not only fine-tuning the image, but choosing to only print the best ones. And because I can instantly look at the picture right after I’ve taken it and adjust while still on the spot, my learning curve has been put on steroids. Back in the late 90’s I was mouthing a whole lot of Luddite stuff, but digital has totally made me a better photographer than I ever would have been otherwise. And even with a pretty cheap printer (I think mine cost like $70 + ink), I frame my stuff and decorate my walls with it without shame.
Nice! Thanks for the educated reply.