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For as long as I’ve been talking about wanting a new camera, it only took me a few hours to decide to buy one. Once I had my sights set on the one I thought was right, I found the best price and ordered it. It’s actually taking me longer to figure out how to use it than it did from the time I thought of it to the time it was delivered to my door.
One thing I wanted was something a lot smaller than the bulky old Kodak I’ve been using for so many years. It’s been a good camera, but there are places I couldn’t take it, and I could never hide it in the palm of my hand or stick it in my pocket. I can with the new Minolta (which I refuse to call by its new klunky corporate name).
There are some things I hadn’t anticipated, like the fact that without a viewfinder, I have to depend on the LCD monitor to see what I’m shooting at. That’s fine indoors, perfect even, but outside with a little sunlight at my back I can hardly see anything because of the glare. I have to guess, or I have to learn to figure things out a little better. It helps if I stand in the shade, but that’s not always possible.
Today I took my new camera and dropped in on Tammy and the kids. If I thought I could hide it, small as it is, from Aiden, I was wrong. He came marching over to me and reached out for it, and said, ever so brightly, “Camera!” In fact, he said the word “camera” at least eighty times in the half hour I was there. He also left his grubby little marks on the monitor (but not on the lens, which is pretty well protected in this model).
And he pushed a couple of buttons. I didn’t think it meant anything, but for some reason every shot I took while I was there was delayed for a few seconds before the shutter went off. That’s why most of my photos are of empty air, because kids don’t generally stay in one place long enough. I didn’t get anything I was aiming at, and I got several shots of the place a child had been a few seconds before. Not exactly riveting stuff.
When I got home and looked at the manual, I discovered that the two buttons I know Aiden pushed were the two buttons that, pushed in sequence, turn on the red-eye flash. The red-eye flash delays the shutter time for a couple of seconds after the flash, supposedly to cut down on red-eye. (It doesn’t work, especially with blue-eyed little boys. And it’s very annoying to see your subject dart and dash out of frame before your camera gets around to taking the shot.)
I’m still not sure about the new camera, and I’ll definitely keep both cameras around for a while. But it’s a lot of fun to play with a new toy, so that alone was almost worth the price. Aiden certainly loves my new camera, almost as much as he loves the old one. | 
