Remember a certain gift my father thought about giving me for my birthday, and then for Christmas, which ultimately didn't happen?
A funny thing happened...
What's this?
OMG IT'S A RED CAMERA!
The other new camera is suspicious. Just because mom dropped it a few times and the flash no longer works...
My dad is big on discount electronic stores. He subscribes to email newsletters and voraciously reads their ads in the paper. After my birthday and shortly before Christmas, he found out about this camera that had some of the specs I was interested in--namely, it had 7x zoom. My current camera has 3x, as does the doorbuster camera dad picked up on Black Friday. That would be the main reason I wasn't interested in that camera; I wanted something that was a clear improvement on what I had, not an updated version of the old model. This camera in the ad was under $100, so he told me to look it up online and see what I could find. It seemed okay, with the main drawback being that it comes with its own battery, which has to be recharged inside the camera. Weird. I mean, you can remove the battery, but you can't recharge it just on its own, apparently. It hadn't been reviewed by professional reviewers--it didn't even appear on one of the sites, and the other site had just one or two submitted reviews--but it seemed decent enough, especially for the price. I also saw that it came in red. I don't know why, but I really wanted a red camera. I've even had a dream about a red camera, but I realized the possibility of getting a decent/good camera in red wasn't high. The other colors it came in were silver and black. I told dad that if he could get it in red, I'd be okay with that; silver might be fine, too. However, the deal? It was only for a black camera. Meh. I passed.
A few weeks ago, the camera again came on sale for just under $100. (I forget the original sale price, if it was about $80 or about $100.) I really don't have the money to spend on a camera--that pesky not-having-a-job thing rears its head again--so again I passed. However, dad came across an ad the other day that put the camera on sale yet again--this time under $80, and including all three colors. He couldn't pass it up. We now have a red camera in the family. And let's be clear, it's a family camera, though I'm sure if I were to come up with the money dad would let me call it my own. It seems like it takes decent enough pictures, and the zoom works well. The place he bought it from has a 15-day return policy, so he wants to make sure we use it. I know I have another memory card somewhere, so I'll have to pop that baby in; the camera's general memory holds about two dozen pictures, which isn't a lot but it's enough to play around with it. This is exciting!
Even better, it came with a free camera case, though the case has this funky smell that isn't especially pleasant. Consider this, though: Even inside the case, the camera is smaller than my current camera. That's just how bulky my old camera is. The case isn't that much smaller, just fractions of an inch, but it's enough.