This is actually fairly amusing now that I stop to think about it, but I think I’ve finally figured out why, no matter how good they are or how many features today’s pocket-size digital cameras have, I still can’t ever stop lusting after the bigger, fancier (more expensive) cameras that are out there.
When I was a kid, I had one of the little, flat, Kodak 110 film cameras. Simple, portable, took decent pictures, and was cheap enough to entrust to a kid without having to worry about it too much. Meanwhile, dad had a nice SLR of some kind. When dad’s camera eventually died, I’d spend hours playing with it, and even looked into getting it repaired at one point when I was in high school (though at that time, the repairs were far out of my budget).
When I graduated from high school, I got a camera as a present from my grandparents. While it wasn’t an SLR, it was the film equivalent of today’s high-end digital cameras — it could work quite well as a point-and-shoot style, but it also had a number of more manual controls, a good zoom lens, and had the size, heft, and weight of what I associated with a “real” camera. That camera lasted me for a good few years, until it disappeared (along with a few other belongings of mine) when I had to kick out a roommate.
Now, of course, that distinction between small “kid” cameras and large “adult” cameras is firmly ingrained in my head. I see people like Cory Doctorow geeking out about their ultra-tiny cameras, and while I know that they’re quite right, and these are damn cool cameras, and they’re worth every penny…I just can’t get over feeling like they’re toys. It’s silly, stupid, and outmoded thinking…and I’m stuck with it.
Well, not entirely stuck. At least I recognize my problem (that’s one of the twelve steps, right?). And if all goes well, come payday, I’ll be getting a tiny (but very full-featured) camera of my very own.
It’s a start, right?
iTunes: “Justify My Love (Hip Hop)” by Madonna from the album Justify My Love (1990, 6:35).