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Subject:
[adventure!] Digital camera advice
Date:
4/4/2004 3:05:20 PM
Hey folks,
A year or two ago I decided to buy a digital camera. My
previous experience
with cameras had been with the point-and-click variety that
show up at your
house and you can't remember whether you bought it at a
garage sale for 50
cents or took it from your parents' closet. My strategy with
the camera was
to put batteries and film in it and then every so often hold
it up in the
air or in front of my hip and say 'hey!', then take a
picture of people some
friends turning around with a questioning look on their
faces. I literally
have shoeboxes full of these kinds of pictures intermingled
with pictures of
dorm rooms or dirty student houses taken at strange drunken
angles. These
are a few of my favourite things.
So the idea behind buying a digital camera was partly to
save money on film
processing by downloading drunkenly-angled pictures onto my
computer, but
also to save money on hyper-tension drugs by throwing out my
scanner[1].
The model I decided to buy was an Olympus 500-Something,
based on careful
research that involved asking my computer-savvy friend
Scott[2] which camera
he bought.
I can highly recommend this camera. It has survived this
long in the hands
and pockets of an absolutely careless traveller, through
sandy deserts,
humid showers, bumpy bus rides, and even precarious olive
trees and is only
now beginning to express its true feelings by occaisionally
refusing to turn
on. By occaisionally of course I mean only when there is
something really
cool to take a picture of, like a full moon over a church in
Transylvania[3], but then allowing me to take a picture of
my face in the
morning, which at least a couple of you know is not pretty,
but few of you
know just how unphotogenic a person with a funny-looking beard
can be after
a night in a snorey hostel. I was taking the picture of my
face this
morning because I was about to shave off part of my
ridiculous beard. But a
combination of alluringly beautiful weather and an
indecision about which
part to cut off has allowed the beard to live another day.
Anyway, the latest trial my camera has had to endure has
also involved my
pants (also known as my 'camera case'). This afternoon I
took a couple of
buses to get to Bran Castle (which is referred to as the
Dracula castle, but
which seems to have absolutely no link to Dracula) and put
my camera in the
outside or 'cargo' pockets of my pants, which button up,
just in case there
was a pickpocket on the crowded bus. I also put my wallet in
the other-side
cargo pocket and kept a few bucks in my regular pockets.
Crowded buses are
a great place to pick peoples' pockets because when you are
standing up you
have to hold on to the handles above your head, leaving at
least one side of
you undefended. When I got back to the hostel I noticed that
the pocket
that had my camera had been slashed with a knife. A neat
little slash along
the back of the pocket, about three inches long. Just enough
to pull out
.... I don't know what actually, but not an Olympus
500-something camera. Or
my wallet, which was on the other non-slashed side of my
pants.
I was happy with my 'paranoid' strategy of reaching down
every couple of
minutes to check whether the buttons of my cargo pockets
were still
buttoned-up. Of course, this didn't stop the thief from
slashing my pants,
but I'm pretty sure it did stop them from slashing the extra
inch or two
that would have allowed my camera to fall out.
In conclusion, my travel advice for you is to take the extra
time to shave
off part of your beard in the morning and just catch the
next bus. You'll
avoid the pickpocket, and when you smile at the pretty
ticket girl at the
castle she might smile back.
Have fun!
jay
[1] A 'scanner' is a piece of equipment that attaches to
your computer and
allows you to store up to 4 4x6 photographs while you try to
figure out why
your printer no longer works.
[2] Scott has been referred to (lovingly) by his wife as
'the guy who, among
geeks, is the alpha-geek'.
[3] Hey, I'm in Transylvania right now, and it's a full moon.