Farewell to camera

My new camera has arrived! It's so beautiful! (Oh my God, it's so bright and vivid! So beautiful. So intense. [starts weeping])*. The shade of turquoise is even prettier than it looked in the picture online. I just can't wait to take it out for a spin--to the beach, snorkeling, hiking, wherever. It's so nice to have a camera with a screen that works; yes, we are in the 21st century now. The memory card capacity is 64 times that of the memory card in my old camera, so I won't have to worry about running out of memory nearly as fast, even considering the increase in resolution. The zoom is only a little better, but with the increased resolution there should be some more digital zoom capability. And the features have come a long way since my old camera was made five years ago (It recognizes faces? Whoa!).

But before I cast my out-dated camera into the dust, I must remember that I did love my old camera. The first camera that I got to use as my own was a clunky cast-off from my parents, a 1 megapixel digital camera (looked grainy as the wallpaper on my 14 inch laptop) with no zoom (save for stepping forwards/backwards) and no memory card (I might have been able to purchase one, but somehow I made do with the ~24 photo internal memory). Luckily, for my next birthday, my dad went with me to buy a good camera. 4 megapixels, video (albeit low quality), and 3x optical zoom! It was so cute and perfect.

I got it in the early days of video capability for normal point-and-shoot cameras. I remember surprising friends who, seeing me holding up the camera without clicking, figured I was just setting up still photos. The "secret" video camera got some pretty amusing candid clips.

My first real outing with the camera was for the Alaska cruise my family got to go on. I was astonished how quickly I filled up my memory card on that week-long cruise; when I'd bought it, I couldn't imagine needing more than 256 MB (I mean, that's well over a hundred photos!). But I made do, and anyway, it was nice to force myself to delete bad or boring photos as I went along, so the task of sorting through hundreds of photos later would be reduced. Though being inexperienced with the camera, I unfortunately saved a few bad shots because I couldn't tell from the small screen that they were blurry (afterwards, I learned I had to zoom in to make sure my shot wasn't blurry). Still, despite these small issues, I was extremely pleased with my camera. It was everything I needed at the time.

So let me remember it for those good times, the days of my Alaska photos, and raise a glass to its glory days. Here it is, the old girl:

The old camera, taken with the new camera. So cute.

And here's the new one.

The new camera, taken with the old camera. (Lighting is pretty bad; it looked way too dark without the flash, even though the first photo, taken under the same ambient light as the second, looks fine without flash. We'll blame it on some undesirable setting that I can't change because the screen doesn't work.)

Ain't she a beauty? To summarize what I've mentioned before, it's a Panasonic Lumix TS2, 14.1 megapixels, 720p HD video (which allows zoom during recording, something the old camera didn't do), 4.6x optical zoom, 28 mm wide angle, all in a bold turquoise shell with a sort of brushed steel texture, 10m/33ft waterproof, 2m/6.6ft shockproof, -10C/14F freezeproof, and dustproof. I can't wait to build up a collection of lovely photos and exciting adventures with my new camera.


* To understand, you'll need to have seen this. Well, I'm not sure any of us can truly understand that.