You Can't Stop Progress
2005-08-26 18:32 - General
I'm a techy kind of guy. Even though I don't generally care for pictures much (looking at them, I absolutely hate having them taken of me), I have had a digital camera for a long time. I mean that literally. My digital camera was purchased years ago, and when it was, it was used and already out of production. I happened to choose that particular model because it was a good price/performance balance at the time, plus it was a cool (to me) non-camera-like form factor. If you take a look at the linked page, you can see the thing cost a thousand dollars when it was new, and the page saying it "just came out" has a copyright date of 1997 on the bottom. And looking at the picture, the lens is in front, and the viewfinder/display is in back. It's held horizontally, along the left of the picture is the strap that goes around your hand as you hold the camera. But times change...
For a slight digression, the job I took just shy of two years ago, which I moved to Brooklyn because of, purchased for me a phone and DSL line. It was officially so that working for them from home (in my free time!) would be possible. But that didn't happen a whole lot. Later on, I got a cell phone (a blackberry really) that could beep and buzz at me if the company's servers were in trouble. They paid for all the service and it was quite nice. In truth a paltry side benefit, but it was the only perk I had (or ever have, at this point really) besides standard benefits. In fact, the service kept right on going after I left them (in December 2004), because initially at least, I continued working for them on a consulting basis. It was only in the past few weeks that they finally decided to stop paying for all that service.
This left me with a relatively expensive phone, and no service. Long story short, it's a very fun toy but to me it's not worth what the service costs. And if I'd be paying that much for the service, I think I'd rather have a different device which would come pretty cheap along with the service contract, so out it had to go! This left me with money burning a hole in my pocket. I ended up replacing my old digital camera. I replaced it with what amounts to a generic store-brand Brica DigiAart Z718. They say right there that Brica is the house brand name of a Taiwan manufacturer. Thing is, I believe it. I believe this is the guts of an expensive name brand camera, without the name brand sticker on it. I did when I decided to buy it, and I do now after I've taken a few shots with it. For example, check out the large size format of my cat Tegs' belly. That is reduced phenomenally in size from what the camera can handle (2560x1920 native, higher with interpolation) but you can still see the details are crisp, something my old camera didn't handle so great.
And the thing is tiny! It's about the size of my wireless mouse, which fits right in my hand. It's almost too small, except this way it will be easy to carry around when I want to. So what's with the title on this post? Well I paid half for this camera that I did for the original one, if memory serves. And it's obviously quite a lot more featureful. Whoopee!
