A Camera
As a kid the first camera I ever used was one of those slim Kodak cameras that took a flip-flash cartridge. It wasn't new, but I remember that tall stick of flash bulbs that stuck on top of it.
My parents had a standard big black plastic point and shoot 35mm camera for most of the 80's and 90's that we took with us to vacations and events. We would take 50 pictures and get two whole rolls of film processed in an hour.
When I was in about middle school the cool new thing was the disposable camera. You just took your 24 pictures and dropped the whole thing off at the photo lab at Walmart. It was a whopping three dollars, five if you opted for 1 hour processing.
But we would take those disposable cameras with us to summer camp, the zoo, vacation, whatever and carefully select what those 24 images were going to be. You couldn't just blast through them all in a day.
The first digital camera I used was in college. We had a massive Sony Mavica - yes, the one that used floppy disks - to take photos of our work so we could print them out in our portfolios. You see, in 2003 your portfolio was literally a physical portfolio of prints you brought with you to interviews. We were allowed to take it all around the campus and take pics of whatever, it was wild to instantly see the image on a screen right after taking it.
Our video camcorder had this playback feature for years but never in a still camera. Being able to see the image, delete it, and try again to take the shot was a game changer. If you took photography class you were not only using a real live SLR film camera but you were learning how to physically develop your own pictures in a dark room as well. Those were expensive, and only the hardcore photography kids owned those.
Right after graduating college in 2006 I finally got my hands on my own digital camera. They did make DSLR's at the time but like every other 22 year old fresh out of college, I had no real money. I splurged on a flip phone. This was the same time that blogs started showing up with digital photos. Before that you would have to take a picture, develop it, scan it, then crop and upload it to your computer.
Three years prior there was a TV show that aired called America's Next Top Model. One of the contestants, Elyse Sewell was a fan favorite because unlike the rest of the girls she acted like she hated everyone and didn't want to be there. This made for good TV. Anyway, after the show ended she did in fact end up becoming a professional model for a few years and documented all of this on her LiveJournal.
She would take photos of random things she ate, saw, and did while on modeling jobs all around the world. She would take pictures of an event and have photos of it up the same day. All I could think about was how clear and clean her photos were and in several of them that involved a mirror you could make out the little brushed metal bronzit beige rectangle she carried around with her - A Canon PowerShot Digital ELPH SD300.
I wanted my blog pictures to look like her pictures. I was still using disposable cameras. It was 2006. I needed a digital camera. So one night my husband and I went to BestBuy with $300 and bought our first one. Now, it wasn't the fanciest but it was a Canon Powershot just like Elyse used. Mine was slimmer and used standard SD cards. I think it came with one that had a massive 32MB of space.
But I took that little thing everywhere. It was the size of a deck of cards. It had a flip around screen. The battery lasted forever. Now, it couldn't take low light shots and the sensor often got washed out in bright light but I didn't care. It was my camera. I took all my oldest sons baby photos with it. I posted pictures to my Flickr and was happy.
It still works too. But around 2009 my husband got the itch for a nicer camera and bought a Canon G11. Still a point and shoot but a point and shoot that has been cycling Tren. This thing had various modes, adjustable ISO and shutter speeds just like a real DSLR. Those were still wildly out of our price range but this beast of a consumer camera was amazing.
I do have to point out that I owned a 35mm canon rebel that I bought for a photography class I never did take. I still have it. I don't have film for it. The grip has disintegrated into a sticky mess. Film and processing is crazy expensive. It was massive and heavy and you had no idea what you took a picture of until later. I was not that kind of camera person. I'm still not.
Like everyone else these days I use my cell phone camera for literally everything. They are good enough. I don't like how my iPhone 13 will auto smooth grainy images when you zoom in. Low light is impossible because the lens is the size of a bb. But it's easy and always available.
I always wanted one of those $ 5,000 DSLR camera setups but never had that kind of cash, nor a real reason to use one. I never learned how to properly adjust apertures or anything.
Which brings me full circle back to something new I discovered just a month ago. A modern version of the point and shoot camera. These days folks who use digital cameras are using them for professional photos, product images, and streaming content. For the last year I've been using my cell phone to take images of the cards I put on eBay. The phones auto correctiveness mutes foil cards and even with the light box can be dull. It's good enough for eBay tho.
Then about a month ago I started making little youtube videos where I open packs of cards and talk about them. I use my phone for these and it shows. The pro's out there use real multi-thousand dollar video cameras with lighting booms and fancy microphones and all that. I'm just using my four year old iPhone.
So I started looking into using a better camera. Now, the G11 does shoot video but far below the quality of the iPhone and the sound is even worse. I'm not exactly a loud person. But I did stumble upon something I now have set as a goal. Once I sell enough cards I plan on buying a Sony ZV-E10 II. They aren't cheap but it's the same form factor as the G11 and this thing can record 4K video.
I watched a few example videos of what the output looks like from some camera review sites. The big bonus here is that it can take real camera lenses. The G11 has a built in one that zooms out accordingly. I can get a wide angle lens to do product review videos, or a 35mm lens to take product photos. Better quality and more utility. Plus, it's not a phone.