Silly Cameras VI The silly cameras are shy; they hide in their burrows, awaiting better days, as covid alternates with ever-joyous democrat party “white lives stink” riots, looting, & walmart burning, but I nevertheless heroically continue the silly camera safari.... DSLR  Silly cameras I II III IV V  VI  VII  VIII    Canon A1400    Canon A1100    FujiFilm a205    Canon SD890    Canon a520    Canon a580    Nikon P500    Canon G5    Canon sd1200    Canon sd300    Canon A460    Canon SD1000  Olympus D-510    Kodak CX7430    Canon A560    Canon A60    Sony W170  @ 7/4/20 I offer the 1/13 16mp Canon Powershot A1400 in all its beauty and majesty what is on its dawdling way from ebay, and judging from recent disappointments it'll probably be broken — but so be it! ... Mine not to reason why etc.... I've already got the inspiring a1300 with the same megapixels so I guess I'm looking forward to discovering the exciting innovations in the 1400. ... Interestingly, the a1400 manual is also the a2600 manual, the 2600 being the feature-degraded version with no viewfinder and a wonderful proprietary rechargeable battery for $150 (versus the superior a1400 for $100). 7/10/20. And at last the wandering ebay boat came in, and the adorable camera is just like the picture, beautiful chic black, and even with a 2Gb card in it and crummy batteries, which I've discarded of course and replaced with NiMHs. I was going to recommend the seller, but the ebay receipts now seem to hide that information, suggesting that so many forlorn purchasers pester ebay in angry mobs and perhaps I'll just let it be....  A notable innovation over the a1300 is the centrally-located movie button, so it's much easier to take accidental movies, which I did, immediately — but I'm wrong — the a1300's got it too, so I suppose the fault is not in our innovations. ... Verified exciting features versus the a1300:  no digital zoom defeat; no "P" mode. ... So it's wildly improved in every way! ... & then I realized this feature-degradation is apparently an ancient tradition! The first of the A???? I got, the a1000, was "IS"; which was gone with my a1200 unit ... but remained with the a1100.... 7/12/20. Realizing I had a completeness failure, I bought a $27 ebay 2/09 12mp Canon Powershot A1100 IS to fill in the gaping gap between my a1000 and a1200. ... 7/17/20. And it arrived in a few days, and it is beautiful beyond compare! And came with a few demo pix, including a video of the seller's place, apparently, with shelves of cameras/junk and a youth playing a videogame. ... And so the a1100 is now my goto camera-in-the-morning, as I wander the estate unlocking doors and taking pictures of monstrous skies of rain & storm.... Ah life is good.... 7/19/20. And then, fighting our way through the clouds of covid, we visited the Cooper City Antique mall where I found this beautiful 7/03 2mp Fujifilm FinePix a205 3x zoom for a mere $10, rotten batteries included! ... So I took it into the shop, realized I'd thrown-away my cunning battery brush into the pitiful owenlabs chaos, contrived another, had at it — and it is now perfect without blemish or fault. ... Well it forgets the date fairly easily.... As a special mitzva-esque bonus, the XD card is filled with somebody's 5/06 Israel trip! 8/5/20. This week's silly camera is a rechargeable 5/08 10mp Canon Powershot SD890 IS 5x zoom from Hitek. And not only did it came with its charger, but the apparently-original canon battery actually charged-up! And I even have back-up, in my SD800! Its manual explained that a plastic thingey on the lanyard has a little plastic bump on it, supposedly for pushing the SD card so it'll pop-up, presumably the tiny-fingered Japanese finally noticing what giant clumsy hands we round-eyes got.... 8/13/20. But actually I bought this 3/05 4mp Canon Powershot A520 4x zoom at the Salvation Army on 8/4 for $22.50 after an exciting 25% discount ($250? in the day). The a520 joins its pitifully-inadequate merely 3mp sibling the A510 in the herd. What also came with a beautiful case which the A520'll easily take advantage-of — well maybe not, the a520's a little thicker. ... And of course the beautiful a520 is in the proud line of the A540, my ur-silly camera.... And the beautiful camera came with its original box! Filled with exciting antique software and the manual and wretched accesories, and additional such debris for a printer, doubtless part of some package deal in the shadowy years past. I didn't of course get the printer, but it probably wouldn't be functional anyway after all these years, unlike the mostly-immortal silly cameras.... 8/13/20. Well I caught this 1/08 8mp Canon Powershot A580 4x zoom failing to focus when I zoomed across the room! Even when the little green square was showing, it didn't, until I moved it around to get different green squares — which of course one can't even see when one is using the preferred optical viewfinder, as opposed to the battery-draining LCD screen. And actually I had detected this before in others of the herd, so I guess the holy Canon isn't so great, sob sob. ... But my A540 — the latter-day working one — doesn't do that. But then, in the a580 menu, I changed "AF Frame" from "AiAF" to "Center" — and then it worked much better! The "AiAF", presumably "Artificial Stupidity Auto Focus", is a called-out feature in the camera name printed on the top — "PowerShot A580 AiAF" — which I guess explains everything.... But anyway, it is a thing of beauty, as are all the silly cameras, even with the unfair competition of my ravishing latter-day pixel. 8/24/20. The luxurious 2/11 12mp Nikon Coolpix P500 36x!! zoom is another hitek gamble obtained at tremendous expense, but cute as a button! ... It came with a perfectly respectable 8GB SD card, charger, and apparently completely-depleted battery, which aroused my darkest suspicions as I waited for the charger light to turn green, tapping my foot. ... But then again, amazon's got a replacement charger+2 batteries for just $14.... Inspiringly, the manual says the charger is "extra-charge" so to speak, so you would be ever more firmly welded to the Nikon copy extortion, presumably requiring a proprietary USB cable to connect/charge the camera @ your PC.  ... Well the charger LED never turned green, but the battery did seem to charge, and all is well & beautiful. ... Genuine antique Nikon battery! And not bad pix! 9/13/20. And then, amidst the devastation of the covid plague, I pitifully broke down and bought a $35 5mp 2003 Canon Powershot G5 @ ebay, to tide me over as I languished in the beautiful tropical isolation. ... 'N it was $800 in the day — what a bargain! 9/18/20. And it arrived in glory and is a beautiful touching little camera. It came with the ridiculous brandx case in which it was probably sold to one of my geezer cohort back in the day, who has probably departed from this vale of tears, so his camera bag, camera, remote control, manuals and cables — including an extraneous SD1000 manual! — found their way to ebay, and then to me. I already got the G1, 2, and 3, and I don't think there is a G4 — but I could still waste money on a G6 and onwards, ever striving, ad astra! ... And I managed to take a picture with the remote, although it did not fall tripplingly to the hand — I had to set it to the "timer" thing before it'd go, but at last it went, and falls under the dancing cat heading, amazing but not so great. ... Of course I didn't set-up the requisite tripod equipment. ... And thus did the primitive selfie crawl out of the mud.... And then I discovered the precious G5 connected to USB shows-up in file explorer — but not in my beloved DOS filesystem, and hence, not in my precious OwenShow! ... Oh bitter sneaky orientals. Although the USB provided is for a standard "mini" plug, so that's not sneaky at all, at least compared to the almost-universal proprietary competition.... 9/26/20. $22 bought this  10mp 2009 Canon SD1200 IS @ ebay, and it is a thing of simple beauty, supposedly $280 at amazon, but actually, tragically, no longer available. ... Like the majority of my precious silly cameras, it is a little banged-up, but still takes beautiful pictures — well, sadly, not perfect: it's a little fuzzy @ indoor daylight telephoto. ... Even after I persuaded it to use the flash! But its simple heart is still pure, and it will dance with the herd in the light.... 10/6/20. Another beautiful ebay treasure: the 4mp 11/04 Canon SD300 for only $37! ... Not such a bargain I suppose — but it's so cute! ... Tiny harmless little thing ... supposedly $350 in the day.... And of course it takes lovely pix. And it came with its original box & two proprietary batteries & a charger.... 10/21/20. A mere $20 got another exquisite ebay bargain, the 5mp 1/07 Canon A460. It is apparently a predecessor to the silly camera I gave the beloved pater, of a similar vintage, but the a470's got 7mp and no viewfinder! ... Will the wonders never cease.  A 6/07 popular photography says it was a crummy $140. And the a470 was comparably-priced. ... Obviously the silly camera glory days were passing even then, as the dreaded iphone loomed (released @ 6/07). ... Both a460/a470 have a bogus "P" "program" mode where I could set it to my preferred 1.3 f-stops dark, the better to create precious abstractions of sunlight and shadow. But both also refuse to turn-off the display in the "P" mode, which makes them pretty-much useless for that purpose.... 11/10/20. Another incredible $16 value at ebay, my luxurious & exciting 7mp 2/07 Canon SD1000 turned-out to be so cheap 'cause had no charger! ... Which minor detail of course I didn't notice. ... Oh sorrow, oh geezery! However, not to worry; I've bought so many silly cameras I actually already had a charger for my SD300 which works with the sd1000, so all is well and it takes the usual beautiful pictures & I am saved from my stupidity by more stupidity! ... I am so lucky. ... 'N' $250 in the day! But, tragically, it does feel as if I'm reaching the bottom of the barrel.... 11/21/20. An astonishing $9.99 value at an ebay junk mart, my beautiful 2mp 5/01 Olympus D-510 works perfectly ... as much as Olympus ever works, anyway. ... And the endless-puffery magazine MaximumPC claimed it was $400 in 2001! But after buying the thing I was astir with misgiving, forgetting that, in addition to my silly camera drawer, I had made a stupid camera drawer just below, for the proprietary junk section, olympus stupidMedia foremost among them — what the D-510 uses. Which worked! We are stunned & amazed. ... And, as usual, pretty good pictures! ... The MaximumPC "review" recommended using the USB connection for offloading pictures, which no doubt worked better than whatever pitiful stupidmedia readers were readily available but was, of course, proprietary itself and, guessing from the assiduous MaximumPC puffery, the cable was probably an extra-cost exciting accessory.... Pitifully, it came in a silly PS2 (game) case, a form of communication between the seller and the great beyond — me, that is — the seller obviously not making any money, but expressing obscure affection for a useless gadget for which, long ago, they could no longer buy the stupidmedia film, and which their phone camera's abilities wildly outdistances. ... But they don't want to throw it away; & nor do I.... 12/2/20. Another ebay bargain, my 4mp 2/02 Kodak CX7430 was only $13! ... But, see, I am commentless! ... The covid's finally got to me I guess. ... as I wander thru the biden landslide all around me.... 12/4/20. This 3mp 5/03 Fujifilm A210 arrived on the same day as the cx7430, and occasions a little more commentary: far from "finepix", its pix are sadly dark. ... So meaningful, in our dark tragic times.... 12/10/20. Returning to the kindly obsessive-completeness world of wonder, at last I acquire a 7mp 2/07 Canon A560 ebay special, $22, which works good and fills in the gap in the historic series starting with my ur silly camera, the broken a540. ... Which, in its working form, has more/better fancy photo features, if a megapixel less picture. ... But never mind, the a560 will take a place of honor in the silly herd, and lovely pix. ... But apparently I already got the a590, so the completeness is done here.... Christmas 2020. ... Another valuable obsessive-completeness entry, the 2mp 2/03 Canon A60 cost a mere $29.99 including three broken CF cards! ... But actually it's probably the camera that broke 'em; it seemed to be working on my seemingly-good card. But then that knocked it over, and it complained again. ... So it's a blue xmas for a60?...  But it has its cute stickers on it! ... Probably an ancient return to a lesser camera store without the sales forcefulness of my beloved Willoughby's & my broken a540.... But it was $220 in the day! And I was able to take two pictures in a row without failure. I did turn-off the display, which probably cheered-it up a little and I usually do anyway ... and the pix aren't great — but I am playing with history here, and I must be content. ... So the lady's three CF cards are probably OK; it's just a cranky camera. ... And CFs cost $10 or $20 these days; so maybe I still came out ahead, for my future CF-camera explorations. ... And one of them's a genuine canon-brand CF with a canon-brand plastic case! — so well worth it! ... Owen scores! 1/4/21. Now we get to the hard stuff, a  10mp 1/08 Sony W170, outstanding in the luxurious incompetence of the brand and the time. It was a mere $29.99 @ ebay, which is wondrous since the amazon offerings start at $63, and probably don't come with a memory stick either. And not just any memory stick, but a memory stick super duper pro duo whatever-we-changed-last-week — the triumph of Sony Scammery. Like an innocent techno-peasant, I tried to read the thing with a couple of my regular SD/CF/etc. readers which failed miserably, until I found in the back of the SILLY drawer a bright green reader with a red scribbled note on it pointing at the "memory stick" orifice and claiming "worked 10/18" and of course that was the charm with the stupid proprietary scam film. So I went and found another such reader in the backup store, and moved the two of 'em from the SILLY drawer to the far more magnificent and menacing STUPID drawer, where the memory sticks and stupid media hang-out. ... And thus do the exciting days at the laboratories pass themselves... In 2008, the camera experts at Popular Science said it was $300 — so it probably wasn't, which is probably why Sony never bothered to make the flash work, although I'm confident there are other broken features. ... But it's a lovely machine. I took a slew of pictures 'cause after I set the display to "off", it didn't "review" them on the screen even 'though the option was set, but they must've been so busy cranking out other scams in those glorious days so long ago.... But then I "initialized" the thing, and after it made me set the date/time again, it flashed! And reviewed! ... So apparently the software decays in the camera, but the initialize'll make it right again. ... The Canon cameras "reset" thing doesn't reset everything, presumably because it's not a handy inoompetent software fixit, but Sony included such a function 'cause they knew their software would get befuddled, and so what if they had to "initialize" it just to get it work?