
I'm in mourning today. My beloved Canon EOS 40D is going in for repair. It's not a big repair. Truth be told I'm not entirely convinced that the little bit of foam that needs replacing even does anything. But if I'm going to sell the camera in the future when it's time to upgrade1 I'll need to make sure it's got all its bits and pieces.
So this morning I removed the tripod mount, the memory card and the battery. I even removed the strap. She's all bare and unloved, stripped down to just the basics for her journey to Canon for some 2mm foam to be glued inside it.
Meanwhile that leaves me with a much simpler set of photographic options. There's my original digital camera - a Sony DSC-P50. This thing is practically worthless now due to it's awful battery life, tiny screen and 2.1 megapixel resolution. But it's taken some good pictures since I bought it way back in 2002.


Then there's a couple of camera phones. The Sony Ericsson K800i and the Nokia N95 8GB. The Nokia has quite a good camera capable of capturing nice images - but the interface is so slow you'd not want to use it very much.
In 2006 I bought a Sony DSC-W50 and it's a fine camera. I've taken some great pictures with it and it's the camera that really gave me the photography bug. Compared to today's compacts it is lacking in features. But at 6.1 megapixels it's as high as you really should go on a compact and offers enough control to be a little creative.


So I expect it's the W50 that I'll be taking everywhere for the next few weeks. In some ways I'm rather excited. With no fancy DSLR technology to back me up I'm going to have to make sure my composition really improves. By the time my Canon DSLR comes home I actually hope I will finally deserve it.
1Don't worry Wifey, the 50D will have to drop a lot in price before I'm even going to consider going there. And I know I'm not allowed to anyway. So I'll shut up about it.