Farewell Old Friend, Farewell

Since the inception of this blog, the majority of the photos featured here were taken by a digital Nikon Coolpix I think I received for Christmas in 2007. It accompanied me on cross country trips, commuting jaunts to and from work, documenting the beautiful and mundane, the sublime and the ridiculous.

We had our issues, this camera and me. Although I loved the ease of point and shoot, the ability to change from color to black and white, and the ability to pull it out of my pocket on a whim, it took too long for it to take a second photo, recover after a flash, and I never did figure out how to keep it from going to "sleep" so fast. I did love the macro and ability to take video on the same device as stills, but it never seems to shoot/save to the card, and I long, nay pine, for the ability to focus at will.

Alas, a SLR is out of the budget for the time being, not to mention too heavy to carry around in my pocket. I selected my most recent cell phone for its QWERTY keyboard and not its photographic qualities. Unfortunately, it's all I have left. A cellphone and my dreams of a compact, lightweight, pocket-sided affordable SLR.

My poor Coolpix had been suffering in recent years. The battery door and card door had been chipped for a while, and to keep them from flying open, I had liberally applied duct tape, packing tape, or painters tape to the frame at any given time. There have been a handful of incidents that I call the RED SCREEN OF DEATH, where the lens froze and wouldn't move, causing the whole system to be paralyzed. After some sickenly horrid moments, with prying off the tape, forcing open the battery chamber, and many prayers, the system came back on board and the photos were saved. The thing was battered though, and looked, for a better word, ghetto.

Until yesterday..

Yesterday was the end. (*sniff*)

I was attempting to photograph the August crafting projects, when all of a sudden it slipped off the counter and bounced on the floor. I wasn't too alarmed. I have dropped it before. This time, though, I got the RED SCREEN OF DEATH. Closer examination showed that the lens was dented, off center, and it looks like a fracture appeared in the aperture either due to that fall or me attempting to "tap" the metal into shape.

Time once was, you could open a device and actually figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. This was not that time. It didn't help that tiny pieces started to fall out of the interior of the camera as I pried the back off.

Here lies the carcass of my Nikon Coolpix, as recorded by the cell phone camera. If you look carefully, you can see how the lens is already looking heavenward.

Nikon Coolpix Christmas 2007-September 2011
Farewell Old Friend