Some days I feel like an old man...

Schnoodlepooh left a comment on yesterday’s post that ended with:

“And why, why, why, don't you PLEASE get a digital camera? Join the new millennium. Get with the program.
digital...digital...digital...
:-)”

(Btw, her real name is Peg, which is much easier for me to say than “Schnoodlepooh,” especially when I’m chewing on some food. I tend to spray particles of pizza—ooo, more alliteration!—all over my monitor and keyboard. Anyway, check out her blog. She has taken some absolutely gorgeous pictures—yes, DIGITAL—of... Well, mainly of her dogs. But they’re still nice pictures!)

(Oh, then check out the blog her dogs are writing. Yes, you read that correctly. Her dogs have their own blog. And some days it’s better than some of the people blogs I read. It’s called Paw Prints. If you don’t like dogs, don’t bother.)

(And while you’re checking out good digital photos, scroll through the last month of posts at A Little Bit of Me and look at the shots Robin has taken of flowers and other scenery!)

After Schnoodlepooh, of course Karyn had to weigh in! These women! They always stick together.

Where was I? OH, yes, digital cameras.

My first thought when I read her comment was, “What’s wrong with my film camera?”

My next thought was, “Nothing! So THERE! Besides, I paid a lot for this camera and its lenses. I have an investment here. Why should I toss that away?”

Then a little logic kicked in. I thought, “Yeah, but with digital you get instant gratification. You can see what you shot, and delete it if you don’t like it. You don’t have to wait (whether an hour or several days), you don’t have to pay for developing, and then get credit for the prints you don’t want. You don’t have to scan the prints or negatives to digitize them, and THEN use your cool photo editing software to lighten/darken/adjust them.”

But being basically conservative (read: a tightwad) I hate to spend the money for a nice DSLR camera, several lenses, with at least 6 megapixel resolution that I know I would want if I went digital.

Amy, my younger daughter (who I used to refer to in this blog as Elizabeth, her middle name) spent about $2,000 for a very nice digital Nikon. Then it was stolen when she and companions turned their backs for an instant at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. But that’s another story.

I know I could spend a fraction of that amount for an adequate camera with maybe 3x optical and 8x digital zoom. But I’d always wish I’d spent a little (hah!) more and bought a really nice one.

Thus mired in my internal debate between conservatism and lust for features, I opt to do nothing and keep using the 4-year-old “antique” camera we bought for our Africa trip of 2001. Along with the film scanner I bought to digitize those pictures.

Hey, at the time I bought that gear, the scanning of film negatives achieved higher digital resolution than all but the most expensive digital cameras were capable of. See, I used to be ahead of the digital curve! But times do change.

So, what’s the bottom line? Like an old man stuck in the past, comfortable with the old and unwilling to adapt to the new, I’ll wait to move into the digital photography age.

At least my wife’s new cell phone has a digital camera built in. Too bad there’s no zoom at all and its resolution only produces pictures that look like thumbnails.