holy crap. i did it to myself.

so i recently went on and on about how newly made stuff breaks too soon, requiring replacement, and how we're programmed to think "must have new" any time we see something shinier than what we have. [i'm sure many of you resist this, and perhaps it doesn't affect some of you. lucky buggers.] i try to resist this horrible condition and often succeed. and sometimes not.

[this post is not going to end the way you think it is. stick with me.]

all the cool kids are getting new cameras. they take really great pictures, although we know a lot of that is the person behind the camera. so this makes me think about my cameras. i've been carrying around a Canon Powershot sd550 since I bought it for our trip to Italy a few years ago. the other camera I had was bulky and annoying. this one was light! it fit in my pocket! it takes pretty great pictures! and it's 7.1 megapixels, which is more than the other camera i had. more is better, right?

seriously. i'd just bought this super-expensive camera less than a year before the Canon. it was to be the Knitty magazine camera. but it was big and only 5 megapixels [oh, dear. less is bad, right?]. once the Canon arrived, i felt that the Lumix was already obsolete, and was angry at myself for choosing it in the first place. instead, i used the Canon for everything. that was more than 2 years ago.

this thursday, Mel and i were excavating my office, transforming it from a pile of piles into functional space -- which is another post for another day. Mel unearthed the Lumix in its rather-small, quite-nice LowePro case [smaller than I remember. hmm]. i took it out and there on the lens i saw this: 12x optical zoom.

oh. right. i chose the Lumix after hours and hours of careful searching on digital camera review websites because it had a kickass optical zoom and a Leica lens. clearly I had forgotten that part.

dudes, i talked myself out of liking something i already owned that was more than good enough for my needs just because i thought there was better to be had. it's a good lesson learned.

i charged up the battery last night and took the Lumix along with me to a Tour de Fleece kickoff party. i have some serious manual-reading to do in order to take advantage of all the features of this camera -- many manual or semi-manual options, even -- but here are a few point-and-shoot, low-light, no-tripod shots from last night. i know they are nothing special, except for the subject matter, which is lovely. but i'll be able to do better shortly, and soon, without spending a penny on anything. i love that.










bokeh, here i come.