Cameras and Costco

I bought the CoolPix camera at Costco.  Not because Ashton Kutcher is in the ads for it but because it was a great price in January.  I guessed they didn't sell them all at Christmas.  The darn thing stopped working properly already!!! So, I looked for the receipt since you can return anything electronic to Costco within 90 days with no problems.

I couldn't find the receipt!  Hubby and I had to drive to Carson City today so I  put the CoolPix camera   in an old grocery bag along with the manuals and the charger and such.  I managed to get it into the car.  Then, we stopped at Costco after going to the bank and getting gas for the Toyota.

I stepped up to the counter and said, boldly and with authority "I bought this camera in January and it stopped working right and I can't find my receipt so you probably can't help me."  But he could help me and he did:)  So, I got my money back and Hubby and I cruised over to the camera section to see what they had available.

All the cameras look just like the one I just had to return with the lens that pops out in a series of rings.  I told Hubby, "I think the problem we are having with these little digital pocket cameras is that it has that lens that pops out in a series of rings.  One tiny little piece of dirt and it doesn't pop out anymore and says LENS ERROR."

We had another pocket camera that died on our  hunting trip in November. We didn't get to take a picture of our elk. Maybe it was the freezing temps but it was saying lens error as well so my guess is that it had the same problem as the CoolPix camera.  It just isn't easy being a camera in the desert.  At least that camera lasted a whole year.

Hubby and I looked at cameras for a bit and discussed how expensive a really great camera is and how much nicer the photos were from the old film camera we had. That camera broke after quite a few years of owning it.  We can probably take it into town to get it fixed but you can't hardly get film developed anymore. Film cameras are basically obsolete.  When photos were on film, each photo was an attempt at a work of art for me.  I would frame the photo just right and then snap the picture.  A process I enjoyed very much.

I have quite a few photos [okay, hundreds of photos] in bins.  I go through them every so often.   I started getting rid of photos a few years back and I started with the obviously bad pictures like the photos of the gas pedal and the door trim.  Ooops!  photos.  Now I am   getting rid of a some of the ones that have no meaning left.  Where is that?  Why did I take that picture?  What year was that?  Although I have gone through the old photos a number of times, I still have hundreds of photos in bins.  A lot of them are even in albums inside of the bins.

I think with a really nice digital camera I could still take beautiful photos but...we decided that the cost is too high for a great camera.  So, maybe next year.  This year we would focus on what we really use a camera for:  Snapshots.  Photos of the little things in life like rebuilding chainsaws, documenting the seasons, going hunting,  and other things like that.

The cons of the pocket cameras are that they really don't take as nice a picture as we would like but the pros are many.  They fit in you pocket.  They are convenient.  You can take as many pictures as you want and then just erase the duds.  You can download them for your blog or facebook or sending to your friends and family.  That is the real reason we use cameras nowadays.  To stay in touch electronically.

Hubby found a pocket camera that is water, shock, dust and freeze proof.  The lens is encapsulated inside the camera and does not pop out when you turn it on.  Sounds like just what we need to have a way to document our hunting trips, gardening adventures and the projects and little things that I so love to document.  It is called a Fujifilm XP.  Let's hope it works for longer than our last two cameras.