I Have Found The One!

From For Ellipsis

"A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints."

-Wilfred Peterson

Photography is my adventure. But you know that... right? I have been a little lost since my beloved Konica Minolta Dimage Z1 met with an untimely near death on New Year's Day, at the paws of two flying monkeys known as Dylan and Hendrix. Sigh.

My awesome little camera served me well, but I had been thinking about an upgrade for years. Then, along came my Type 2 Diabetes, and Elvis's cancer, and the loss of a family member and a good friend, and it all seemed to be putting the weight of the world on my creativity. I am doing a lot better. I can think about Elvis without crying, and I can almost hear my brother-in-law Darryl saying, "Girl, get back into life, go take some pictures!"

Yeah Darryl, I know.

Yesterday, Alan and I started our garden this year, and began planning what we are both looking forward to this summer and autumn. We bought some tomato plants and some pepper plants for the vegetable garden, and I got some seed packets for my ZIN garden witch included some flower packets and some hot peppers, but the star of my garden is the beautiful Japanese Maple tree we found at Home Depot. Alan said he wanted me to always be able to have a little bit of autumn around to make me smile.

My garden is in the very early stages, I will do some updating as it takes shape.

But back to the camera.

I have found the new one for me. The Panasonic DMC FZ28. I have done my research and it has some really good user ratings, as well as CNET reviews. Costco has it for around $350.00 but Amazon has it for $75.00 less. Here is where the big decisions are made. I can get it cheaper if I want to wait for it to arrive. I can do that, but in the past, I have had some trouble returning things to Amazon. Is it worth paying the extra $75.00 in order to have a simpler return in case of a problem?

Tricky... very tricky.

The next really big photography opportunity will be in mid-October, when Alan and I are finally going to make it up to Plumas county to see the amazing turning of the leaves. It's just amazing color everywhere you look. It's far enough off, that I can do as much shopping around as I want. I don't want to run into this decision. Until I am able to make the purchase, I have my Dimage working again, thanks to a couple of rubber bands! LOL. It looks dorky as hell, but it is still taking amazing photos!

The photo you see above, was taken in 2005 with my little injured camera. It was/is a nifty little camera, but it was only 3.2 mega pixels and a 10x optical zoom. The Panasonic features 10.0 mega pixels and an 18x optical zoom. It's definitely the step up I have been longing for! I keep thinking about how much better that photo would have been with less noise in it.

It gives me something to really look forward to, but the waiting is hell!


-Carly