Giving Up on a Camera.. Sort of

Last summer I bought the latest in Canon elph series the very compact Canon SD780is. Its a great little package. Its was even smaller than the last elph I had. Great features, it was always there, just a very nice "pocket camera" with all the great features. 12.1 mega pixels, HD movies, face detection,shake resistant, reasonable tele.AND IT MAPS AT 180DPI! It booked out to be $185 at Costco.

It was ready for our cruise to Alaska. It has been good as a camera source for my current passion, watercolor. It was also great for this last cruise in February. The trip with the kids to Mexico from LA. But despite my thinking that elphs were pretty indestructible..... they are not.. especially in my hands. Ask Heather, she got my last one that was in great shape except it started to exfoliate..it continued to flake all the way to the Ecuador.

This latest Elph died, well precisely, the screen died on the last day of our Mexican cruise. It was set up with all kinds of great cool additions. It even sported a 16 gb SD card. Can you imagine how many photos you can take at even 2mg per? Precisely 5000. Oh my. 2 hours of HD movies. yada yada yada.

So what to do, I really need a camera to do the everyday shots.. and all of the other stuff that goes with the expressive personality.

During this time of year.. February.. post valentines day.. there are not piles of digital cameras in the stores. I think that they are waiting in anticipation for the next change. It could happen any-day.. probably CMOS processors for the masses? There are just not any good cameras out there at Costco.. or Walmart for that matter and I am sure that I could find one that would do at Best Buy.. but there I would be stuck with the last greatest idea when the new ones hit the market in April or May, ready for the summer vacations.

So what to do. When in a quandary.. you go on line. In the world of Ebay I noticed that some folks were selling their cameras that did not work with and interesting description piece. Apparently Canon has a loyalty discount. If you have a Canon out of date and not working, Canon will give you a significant discount on a refurbished model of their cameras. What you need for a "loyalty discount" is an old one that has some serial numbers on it and a willingness to send it in. This is particularly big with the SLR photographers who have foiled and spoiled their camera and are ready to trade up to a fancier model. This is where the people with broken down models have a market for their POS cameras. I was ready to do this myself but discovered that my camera's numbers are nearly all worn off. Clearly I have gotten my money's worth out this little gem.

I found a refurb red one that I bought on ebay for 119. I have extra batteries and SD chips so this one makes since while I wait for the next new advances in Elph technology... predictably within the next month or two.

Life is tough when you are on the bleeding edge! ;) Pat