1/24/21. The 8/01 2mp Fujifilm A201 is a tiny perfectly-formed stupid media camera of yore. And it was a lousy list $250 in a 10/02 PC Magazine, so I can't even indulge in my usual bargain gloatathon. ... Altho to be sure it was only $18.70 @ ebay, and takes OK pix. And it came with lovely pix from the ebay seller of out-of-focus close-ups of odd bits of jewelry, so I guess it didn't work for that. ... I hope she knew about the close-up switch on the front of the camera; I know I never did in the days of my beloved casios....

But it's cute as a button. As to be sure are most of the silly cameras, whatever their mundane defects in what we call the real world if you will pardon the expression....

In other news, these cranky days saw one of my innocent silly cameras deteriorate — something not seen so often in the laboratories, in the seemingly immortal if silly herd of obsolete digital cameras: a tiny bit of the battery door of my beloved a1000 fell off, with a resonant clang to my attuned hearing. ... I've had battery doors fall-off, of my beloved Kodak in infant mediocrity, and my actual real software engineer L22, after I retrieved it from obsolence in the glorious beginnings of the silly camera campaign — but that's a Nikon — the A1000 is a Canon for goodness sake! ... I don't recall dropping it, which is no doubt how the fault began, but a few days ago it presented a pointy surface in my pocket and a bit of the battery door did indeed come off. Sic transit etc....

Back at the fujilfilm corral, I must happily report the A201 was supplied with its own proprietary-as-all-get-out USB cable, to go with the fraudulent stupid media, so all in all it is a wonderful evocation of a golden era. But the seller, oddly, included stupid media film, so it's still a breathtaking bargain....

2/26/21. A precious 2/06 Canon 4mp Canon A430 is approximately NOS, coming in its original box with the documentation still in the ur-plastic envelope, although still including an obvious add-on camera case, no doubt bogus trickery back in the day so no one will ever pay the advertised bargain price....

So my first hurdle was figuring-out how the zoom zoomed! ... Well actually before that I had to install a new CR1220 clock battery so it wouldn't keep whimpering at every power-on ... and then I guessed the zoom was the up-down arrows — couldn't find it in the manual! ... And then I went to buy some more CR1220 batteries....

And actually the zoomed shot wasn't so good, and the others were darkish. ... And by 2006, PC Magazine observed price omerta, but they claimed the a430 was "inexpensive" so I can't snoot even about that. ... But the new box & appurtenances are lovely, and the camera is cute — and what else is there?

2/27/21. A second camera from ebay what arrived on the same day as the a430 is a beautiful very camera-looking 1/05 4mp Fujifilm S5100 10x zoom what PC Mag claimed was $360 "street". ... And it takes pretty good pix. Even with its super special XD Picture Card  — oddly, supplied with the camera, the second time this's happened! 

... It's really fraudulent to sell such cameras without noting scammy not-so-available film, but I've borne-up under the injustice because I of course knew before purchase. And presumably hardly anybody would buy one of these things thinking to get a bargain, although perhaps someone so ignorant that they don't know how to make their phone work might be gulled. ... But no, in these days the silly camera purchasers must be composed of those of unbalance tendencies such as myself.

... But sadly, the time has come when there are too many silly cameras, and I had to achingly consider how to carve-out another shelf from the existing cornucopia of all kinds of dubious junk that I treasure. So I made a terrible compromise, and I will de-access selected silly cameras by storing them in plastic drawers in the dark — boring silly cameras with scammy proprietary (of course) chargers which I couldn't pick-up and use without an agonizing charging cycle delay anyway. ... Some of the proprietary-charge cameras are amusing-enough so I will keep them upon glorious display, such as the coolpix 990 with its rotating head — which, on inspection, hasn't got the nasty proprietary battery but perfectly decent AAs which I could replace in a trice at any moment and take pictures with abandon — if the silly thing weren't too much trouble, 'cause of the weird rotation. ... And then I put-away an S4000 and got to entomb it in its own original product box, which was strangely gratifying...

But never mind ... it's all so beautiful ... and silly....

3/11/21. Desperate and pitifully I seized a 1/02 5mp Nikon Coolpix 5000 which, while using a proprietary battery, does at least have a viewfinder and real-camera looks. Because of lifelong ineptitude it didn't come with a battery, something I'm pretty sure was disclaimed right there on ebay, although perhaps not shouted-out, or at least loud-enough for my addled perceptions.  So I purchased a $15 charger/battery from the lost accessories amazon emporium for $15. And when I got it, I had to snip off some little plastic protuberances from in the charger cradle with a diagonal cutter, so the batteries'd fit. But this is ancient history for the intrepid silly camera fan, although it's usually sticking toothpicks in to make the charging battery stay-put. ... And then I noticed the supplied charger — i.e. for the not-included battery — was third-party also. What a tangled web and all....

Along the weary way, I discovered that usux™'s search "bing" knows not the dark corners of internet as well as google, when some criminal cretinous page set-off a giant shouting alarm with flashing lights and stupid frenzy what I had to quell with control-alt-delete & task manager. ... So I have learned so many things. 

The CP5000 was "$1099 (street price)", or so says this contemporary silly article, so that's wonderful. ... The actual pictures are disappointing but this was such an advanced camera I should read the manual. ... Which didn't seem to help much. More relevant, perhaps, were my exciting experience with the annoying Nikon D80 — perhaps the 5000 is also an enthusiast camera where the boring automatic stuff is broken....

&/or the too dark pix might have been the state of the art in those dark days, so the pitiful Macintoshers wouldn't whimper about washed-out photos from their fancy camera set to "auto". ... There's an exposure compensation button which works when I hold the controls hard enough, which reluctance is just electronic antiquity, and might be deoxit-able; but what's really old is how the setting disappears with the power cycle....

A final indignity was the genuine Nikon brand 8MB!! CF card what the seller graciously included — 3 or four pix, max! ... Just a sampler of course, and quickly remedied after a glance in the silly drawer....

4/1/21. Commemorating the sacred day, I took a precious 1/07 7mp Canon A550 into the fold, executing the completion of the A--- series, which includes my first impressive scam-broken Willoughby's A540. ... And thus the circle is completed at last, with thundering resonance & whimpering. & the ebay vendor's mere $18.99 is a bargain compared to Amazon's $35. 

4/10/21. The 10/07 7mp Canon A570 is the latest in my A5?? scam-broken Willoughby's A540 assemblage, thus solemnly almost completing wasted decades of silly cameradom — a510, a520, my glorious $200 2006 willoughby's broken a540, a550, a560, this a570, a580, and a590. — still uncollected is the Canon a530, so the sequence is still imperfect ... but not for long!

... Momentarily I was confused by my "A515", but that's a pitiful polaroid, perhaps attempting to insinuate itself into a canon sequence but still, now I'm concerned I'm completion-ing the times 10 A5?? sequence. ... And then in my studied ignorance I happened upon the astonishing wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_PowerShot_A, where all the a-prefix cameras are listed in ridiculous abundance, so I will never suffer from completionitis — although of course I have many of the cameras in their monstrous chart ... but probably not even a majority....

4/17/21. My $9.75 2/06 5mp Canon A530 came broken. It lit-up nice, but it will write no SD card in my time, apparently. ... Or perhaps some dark and stormy night I will abuse it adequately some more and bring it to glorious life. ... But in a way, a broken camera is appropriate for the completion of the Canon A5?? sequence, starting as it did in timeless memory (aka 2/06) with my brand-new broken A540....

But for now, I guess I'll inter the pitiful thing in the broken camera box, with so many other fallen innocéntes. ... &, pitifully, I bought another ebay special, but this one a high-quality $11.31, and there's a picture of the camera displaying a picture! ,,, Bound to work great....

4/23/21. The second broken A530 arrived! ... I deluded myself that the first one could've been vendor error, although it probably wasn't, but this one was obviously a scam — the LCD image on the back was gershtunk along with the apparently inevitable "card error" — so I petitioned ebay, who provided me with a teeny tiny totally-illegible PDF return label, and the process for printing it exited in less than 30 seconds so I couldn't even try and beat it up. ... So I disputed the charge. My guess is the scammy vendor somehow figured-out how to break the return software — but of course it could be ebay tidying-up their profit picture. ... The world of silly cameras has its brutal side....

Sun 10/24/21 2:11 pm. But then on a lazy weekend I brutally impact-adjusted the 2nd broken A530 and it will no-doubt will never be a particularly reliable workhorse, but it has successfully taken four pictures, recognizably of the desired subject, and thus now is a total triumphant victory and joins the silly throng in blushing competence....

7/5/21. As a fitting caesura in the sacred silly camera tao, I got a $45 8/04 5mp Kodak EasyShare CX7525 out in America somewhere. It claims it's "new never used" so I assume the giant box will be chock-full of incompatible junk obviously miscellaneously assembled in the dark. But upon my return to the mothership, our AT&T U-verse© wireless was totally gershtunk, so I had to use this actual picture taken with the cx7525 itself! And dubiously "photoshopped" via pspx8....

But it took a picture without dawdling! Indeed it was supplied with a vast 128MB SD card! And the box appears to include a genuine Kodak tripod! And I actually had to remove one of the camera stickers advertising some wonderful feature, 'cause I couldn't see the screen to set the date/time! And indeed the picture of the case on the box looked just like the one inside — except the actual case inside didn't have the Kodak logo. ... Certifying its glorious silly camera status, it barely has any info at Dpreview, only a mention in some antique Kodak puffery.

7/7/21. Now the internet has returned and I can annotate my precious gadget with wild excess, but the broken internet had just about as much cx7525 info as the super-fast bluestream wonder we've graduated to — I found no hits for "kodak easyshare dock cx7525", although I am not unacquainted with the things, as in my DX4330 complaints. ... The docks were, of course, like snowflakes, each unique to its camera, so the pitiful Kodak-buying jerks wouldn't be able to cheat and, shamefully, get another camera that'd work in the current dock. So my lovely $45 toy is probably quite rare....

Automagically

The dock was supposed to be connected to a computer, so the owner could go out for an exciting evening at the local arts center, grabbing the camera on the way, and then returning and replacing it, and saving all the beautiful pix by pressing a single button! ... And, I have actually done that, here, today — minus the arts center — in the modern world of tragic covidery & riot & arson.  ... But Behold! The cx7525's 128MB SD card isn't "new never used"! — there are donkeys & family pictures, from 'round about Christmas 2004. ... But the beautiful  box contained no software, the CD presumably thrown-away in the packaging. I installed a 2011 "easyshare" program I got with my Z990 (and deinstalled with loathing), and of course it didn't work on my period-appropriate XP, although I imagined it did at first, because Usux© had its own program that'd load the pictures and did so, and a few times I thought it was Kodak but, no, the Kodak program was totally gershtunk..

7/10/21. But when I pressed the button on the stupid dock the pictures marched in, file names thoughtfully vandalized by the Usux© moron mavens. ... So I still got a rare & strange genuine antique kodak easyshare dock installation, although I had to displace my barking dog skeleton....

Still it was not without sorrow: the beloved 2014(?) Dell XP laptop's hinges seem to have suffered, and will never be young again. I had carefully applied blue tape so the lid wouldn't latch and fail, like my 2006 Toshiba, but the wild excitement in moving it around was too much. But, thankfully, not enough to disable it, and I'm sure its future laptop missions won't be challenged by its now-sadly-wonky hinges....

And the pitiful Usux© software of course asks 37 questions before it will condescend to copy the beautiful pictures ... but it must ... its spirit must be free to maunder! ... because it's Usux© Murican Mediocrity Manifest!™

Mon 11/8/21 9:04 am. The weary eternal covid days pass, and the poor little cx7525's genuine Kodak batteries have, apparently, gone the way of all things. I feel compelled to either (1.) decomission the silly dock & everything, or (2.) deconstruct an existing kodak battery and try to refurbish it with brute mutilation. ... Naturally I am inclined to the latter. 

Resurrection

And, voila!, I ripped the Kodak battery pack apart and replaced its batteries with real NiMHs, and the camera worked! ... No better than it ever did, which is pretty flaky, but much better than with the dead Kodak battery thing — which consists of a little plastic fixture separating two back-of-the-truck Kodak NiMHs, the whole thing professionally taped together. The plastic fixture engages some stupid thing in the battery compartment so the ezscam cradle'll know to recharge the thing. I xactoed the tape and pried everything apart; I then tried to tape two real NiMH AAs together with the little plastic thing, but with the tape they wouldn't fit, and I found I could just carefully stick the two AAs in with the plastic thing between them, and it went OK. ... So, total triumph....

7/20/21. It's a silly camera in the sense that it's one of the horrible rechargeable-battery silly-expensive kind that I routinely hold up to scornful ridicule in these pages, but nevertheless, in an acquisitional frenzy I bought a $350 2016 Canon SX540 HS 20mp! 50x!! zoom (including $50 of extra batteries) what I will cherish I hope in a frenzied revulsion for everything I've held sacred in my ongoing saga of silly serenity. ... Actually, I started when some corrupt puffery (the ever-inspiring PCWorld I think) "recommended" (i.e. paid-for phoney editorial text) the 2018 $600! Canon Powershot SX70 HS with 65x!!! zoom, so when I backed-off to my pitiful $300 (+ extra batteries) I was obviously engaged in sensible conservative compromise. ... DPReview doesn't review these things anymore, even in the xmas stupid people round-ups or at least I haven't noticed, sticking to the no-longer-so-sacred DSLR and, so sadly, on to the pitiful successor mirrorless cameras, just as I foretold, whose only difference from our pitiful point 'n' shoot brigades is the mirrorless's got changeable lenses, which of course is marvelou$, since the lenses cost $1,000s and the camera feature itself — or something — raises the mirrorless price by $1,000s too, so it's all good.

But I'm curious if my $300 camera's any good. I had noticed that one of my rechargeable cameras seemed to hold its charge for years, and so maybe it's not so bad. ... I haven't gotten the thing yet, so there may well be excitement in store! ... And counting inflation, my $200 2008 DSLR is worth about $250 today, so it's not so bad....

No wheel

And then I belatedly checked that the sx540 doesn't have the infuriating sx20's obviously-broken wheel, so that's wonderful....

7/28/21. The sacred object has arrived and is slowly charging-up its supplied battery. In my wild reckless enthusiasm I forgot to put a timer on it — which one should always do, because of the definite possibility of the forever charge — but it's been at least two hours already. ... The manual seems to preserve omerta regarding charging time. ... But it wound-up taking the usual 4 hours.

No Viewfinder

But then there was a minor detail which the skilled silly-camera fanatic somehow missed: this is a wonderful camera for children which has no way to take pictures except by staring at the back. ... That is, as I have ranted to the empty ceiling for years, it is exactly like a cellphone, except you can't make telephone calls. And, of course, it has 50x zoom, which'll be useless without a viewfinder....

So amazon nicked me $6 for returning the extra batteries I stupidly got; full value return for the camera. Which is certainly more than I deserve. But then again, no one should be sold a viewfinderless camera, no matter how stupid they are. ... & if I were one of those know-it-all senile elderly persons which, sadly, I am obviously not, I would've just deleted this section and pretended it never happened. ... But no, that would not be the way of honor, and I must be sure that I commemorate my folly. Once again....

So I asked amazon for a "canon viewfinder camera" and the cheapest appears to be $460. But actually there's a cheaper "EOS" — i.e. "real" camera with changable lenses — for only $380. Which is a crummy 2018 camera and which I don't want. ... I have a dslr; surely no one needs two....

This is definitely a significant pause in the otherwise-endless silly camera road. Clearly, my mistake was investing in the future, or at least the recent past. No I must not go there, obviously; I must still turn-over the broken junk of yesteryear to understand myself, and the world....

8/4/21. So after the startingly-depressing sx540, my silly camera hopes & dreams were revivified by a $34 2/09 10mp Fujifilm S1500 12x zoom which works wonderfully and even uses normal SD film! ... And at least the used unit @ amazon was more expensive than my ebay junk....

To make room for the s1500 and silly cameras to come in an endless rush of silliness, I de-accessed a ton of stupid photo books, none of which have the charm of the silliest camera, being devoted without exception to gulling the poor consumer who, on the other hand, makes up for it by almost never reading these things. I certainly didn't. Even the dummy series falls into the photo-scam abyss. ... The cameras, to be sure, are often scammy, but there's something much more charming about them; I suppose they have to do something, and I would guess the exact opposite is true of the books (the less they know, the better, the wise old goniffs mumbled)....

So I even took the official laboratory picture of my mysterious noah's ark with my s1500!

8/5/21. The silly camera gods — very minor dieties indeed — have smiled upon me, and got me two working ebay cameras in a row and this $42 one is a rare and beautiful remnant: a 1/00 ~2mp Fujifilm Finepix 4700 3x zoom including dubious megapixelation and a StupidMedia card — included by the seller! ... Did I mention it actually works! That would be why it was so expensive....

So the dubeity of the pixelation is Fuji claimed it was a four megapixel camera, because of magic japanese trickery. Of course it isn't, but apparently it renders the pictures 4mp large. This kind of thing was common in the brutal early days of silly cameradom & its wild west frothery. .. But viewed in xn the pix appear a decent 2 mp or less, and quite lovely, particularly the included selection of a sideway gentleman and out-of-focus flowers. ... And lookee here: dpreview claims it was "$700 street price"! I am living large in the unimaginable past. 

... Sadly it looks as if google books, like all google projects must, has dived into meaningless brokenness and no longer shows me delightful magazine ads for cameras of the past, instead producing ridiculous refs. like Sediment Records of Biomass Burning and Global Change when I searched for "FujiFilm FinePix 4700z". ... Oh well it worked much better when I gave it something stupider like "FujiFilm 4700", and now it admits in a MaximumPC issue it was $800! & this Popular Mechanics claims the $800 figure too, so it must be so!

... Well "working" may be an overstatement. It definitely took at least one picture, but I would guess the flash has departed this vale of tears long ago. And the little button that opens the flash is marked as if someone, like myself, had considerable difficulty getting it to open at all. Although I'm assuming that's just a pitiful sclerotic mechanical affliction of age ... as indeed would be the failure of the flash to "charge" up to the necessary flashing voltage. ... But still, it probably takes pictures in room light — yes, the pix that came with it are all non-flash. ... I will not be stern; it is a beautiful pretentious silly thing. ... Not as wonderful as the s1500, 'though....

8/6/21. And then I carefully ejected the stupidmedia and gently inserted it again. Carefully carefully. And tried to take a picture, but it wouldn't 'cause it was too dark. Then with foolhardy abandon I used a fingernail to pop-up the flash — and it took a beautiful picture. More than one! ... It doesn't seem to get enough power from the NiMH batteries to actually set the time, or at any rate keep it, but the vast majority of users wouldn't know about that anyway. ... So it worx perfect....

11/2/21. Moving on to a brand new silly camera season, returned from an extensive junk survey, I present one 7/99 1.3mp Olympus C920 3x zoom what uses the amazing StupidMedia, and it may even work! ... And actually I lied about the extensive junk survey; I found a guy at the monstrous factory antique mall who has taken up these pitiful things and I bought a bunch! 

... I guess I wasted my $5 ... but it does light up! ... Actually, it alternately blinks the orangish probably-flash-charging light and the green probably-trying-to-auto-focus light, going one for a few seconds, and then the other. ... But this only after managing a successful StupidMedia install — it didn't like the first 64Mb one, probably it was too immense, but it settled happily with the 16Mb. But won't take any pictures. And so be it ... they are also called, but only to an attache case in the corner with other broken silly cameras....

11/3/21. The same Factory vendor what I got my broken C920 at sold me a working 3/02 Olympus C740 3mp “Ultra Zoom” xD camera — with an xD card included! ... I already got a c740 in 2017, but this one seems to actually work. And of course, the only thing better than a c740 is two c740s. And I can tell them apart because the previous C740's got blue tape on it.

And then, astonishingly, that previous C740 seems to have gone missing! My cryptic notes say it got "boring" so "I took the batteries out" and maybe put 'em in a somewhat-less derelict Kodak. Or maybe it was the derelict Kodak batteries I put in the c740. ... Oh well ars longa. ... A few years ago, I started sprinkling the broken cameras amongst the endless bookshelves and winding corridors of the estate so I'd be "surprised" to come upon one in the shadows of the morning or the bright day — but a few years later I grew tired of this innocent diversion and adopted the broken camera attache case discipline. ... Which, it turns-out, wasn't so disciplined, and I will no doubt come upon my broken c740 by mistake some glad morning, again, with its blue tape....

3/13/22. And then as the glorious Covid world-wide plaugue fades in the secret single voice of science 2022 election preparations, I repeated my sx540 bungle with the glorious 2015 Canon SX530 HS 16mp! 50x!! zoom, also with no viewfinder. Which, as with the sx540, I didn't realize until after ordering it — at least I remembered before receiving it, and it was cheaper used: only $75 at ebay! So this was an immensely more satisfactory transaction.

And I felt, once I started making excuses, that I should have a representative of the silly modern-day useless cameras in the collection, if only to revile & scorn — an imporant feature of the collection. This one, like the sx540, says "wifi" somewhere on it, so it might be almost as good as my hiz-rez broken pixel phone which easily connects with my dropbox account — which my iphone doesn't. ... So the Big Question is: will the sx530 wifi be anywhere near as good as the broken pixel phone, or more like the permanently-broken iphone — the world waits breathlessly....

And anyway, I actually have a few factory cameras left to rant at and scorn, at which I somehow got stuck, I guess after tragically rejecting my pitiful sx540 and all that it stands-for. ... And then of course I could get one or more cheap used "EOS" canons, i.e. with changeable lenses, which I never change. ... Of course it's stupid, but the whole silly camera thing is monstrouly dumb — even 'though I love it to bits!

... So at least the silly thing does take pictures. The 50x zoom is of course useless. And I searched for "wireless" in the manual and there are pages of intricate stuff....

3/22/22. A whole class of despised silly cameras — I mean, in addition to the viewfinderless trash — were the armies of Canons with a proprietary rechargeable battery which the silly camera purchasers would foolishly prefer because they thought buying all those AA batteries over and over again was so expensive — but now I will mine this neglected vein, starting with the 5/04 Canon S60 5mp! 3.6x zoom, really quite cute, as is appropriate for a senselessly-expensive luxury camera ($500?!). ... Already the little plastic cover for the digital connections has detached itself, but it still sticks-on adequately — and after all, one can't really take these rechargeable gimmicks anywhere anyway. ... But I still bought it more batteries and a charger, for $20 which at least is $1.95 less than the camera itself.

Like the disgraced sx530, I have set the charming s60 in my endless assortment with its control-side facing out, just because it's more interesting then the front, which has one of those built-in covers which one pushes aside to turn the camera on and reveal its beautiful zoom lense poking out. And of course the s60 has an obvious decent respectable viewfinder staring-out on the control side. 

... And then again, the congressional election polls are apparently so triste that another covid variant's got hisself roused-up in Europe, and I believe the Holy Biden has actually declared a New World Order what we'd all better be copacetic with....

3/29/22. The world of mystery begins again, with a 2/05 Canon EOS Rebel XT 350D 8mp w/3x zoom aka 18-55mm "kit" lens, a thing of ravishing beauty. The admirable ebay vendor "amazindealsphx2" included two compact flash thingeys and two rechargable batteries and of course the charger. The thing turned-on out of the box and took a beautiful picture. ... And so life is ravishingly complete with wonders such as this in it. ... Of course it is the avant-garde CMOS, but it wasn't defective in my wander-over-the-image psp test....

I should've bought this one instead of my luxurious $200 12mp 450d — this was released before the iphone, whose advent was widely taken as a guarantee of the DSLR collapse, but so in those erlier halcyon days 350d organized puffery never mentioned the price, but was referred-to a few places as a super-inexpensive DSLR "under $2000". Amazon has it for $100-$200; my ebay treasure was just $130. ... So I couldn't find the "350D" ID on the camera although doubtless it's hiding in there somewhere, but Canon obviously felt the stupid "Rebel XT" super sub-brand was the height of chic. 

... But when I bought my very first dslr (dslr1.pdf 1/17/16 3:45:02p), even though I was celebrating its obvious obsolescence/decline, even then, I was still a victim of the megapixel disease and doubtless thought the 450d's 12mp was the bare minimum I could stand. ... So innocent ... I'm younger than that etc....

4/2/22. Scurrying into the past again, we turn to an 8/04 Canon EOS 20D 8mp w/3x zoom aka 18-55mm "kit" lens, which is apparently a predecessor to the 350d although there is a 300D we will have to look into and so as usual delightful mystery abounds. ... Red/green LEDs were apparently not cheap in those distant times so the official charger has a "blink" code where the blinking from 1-3 indicates chargedness and solid means "done" — how primitive & exotic!

... So I'm throwing away ancient useless technical books to make room for more silly cameras; I exile books to the shed in a box for a few months until I can bear tipping them into the recycling bin. I did this before with ancient useless technical photography books which were really beyond useless — actively misleading, just like the magazines — but this new group of exiles are pitiful remnants of my brilliant exciting career as a computer whiz back in the days of sunshine & shadow & the frozen North....

And here golly gee is a mention in the gloriously informative puffery of PC Magazine 11/16/04, claiming the 20D was a $1,599 camera in the day. And I must say, paging through the pitiful scraps google's "books" search provides, those were the days! — there was no advertised price for the 20d, no doubt 'cause canon'd beat you to a pulp if you did that & of course the loyal slavish slatternly whores of the camera biz complied ecstatically....

4/5/22. Returning to a long-delayed Factory Antiques Mall guy's $10 camera, I got the 2/04 Olympus D-580 4mp 3x zoom, last fall I think. It's been delayed because the Laboratory's been unable to contrive a stick-in-the-battery-compartment brush out of a dowel + dremel metal brush but finally the advanced Owen Laboratories R&D has come through and I can scrape the battery compartment to my hearts' content.

But sadly the no-doubt admirable D580 is going to the broken camera attache case in sorrow & darkness and a scammy xD card I inserted & removed never saw the light. ... It does make a pitiful squeaking when turned-on, but only for a little while until it shuts down into darkness....

This juncture also marks my realization that there don't seem to many more Canons, at least of the DSLR flavor. I seem to have gotten a few cheap DSLRs, but the other snooty antique DSLRs are sky's-the-limit expensive! — $200!!! ... I assume I'll have better luck with the despicable rechargable zoomers — but I'm probably wrong....

4/15/22. So anyway, I bought a $25 D580 from Amazon, where there seemed to be a bunch. ... And it worked perfect! 

... I get such a pitiful little thrill when I put my NiMHs in there, turn the camera on, and it does its little graphic dance on the LCD ... so sublime! ... So pointless!

4/10/22. Apparently last fall I randomly purchased the Factory guy's Nikon ProneaS SLR! ... I mean, not only isn't it digital, it's actually a really crummy changeable lens Single Lens Reflex — with fake digital-looking controls! And an obscure film cartridge of the golden age (APS?).

But I wouldn't take back the thrill of pushing a fairly-obvious button and actually removing — and replacing — the lens! ... Oh the excitement, the grandeur. ... It has a cute little mode wheel just like a Canon digital camera! ... Oh and it has amusingly-variant "CR2" batteries, which can still be bought, although I won't. ... As various web authorities complain, it appears to be made entirely of plastic....

And taking off the lens cover I can peer through the viewfinder and manpulate the zoom ring, pushing / pulling a weird cinemascopesque image, which I guess is a super APS film competitive feature....

And I have another Nikon changeable-lens camera, my precious and remarkable D80 DSLR. ... So it's all good. ... Although the same web authorities suggest the camera probably won't work....

4/10/22. This was another Factory failure, so I went and bought it for $35 at amazon, whereupon they cancelled the order — well actually it was one of their low-caste "these sellers" — so I went to ebay and for $9.99 got this 11/00 Olympus C2040 2mp 3x zoom! ... And it is a thing of beauty, and takes wonderful pictures with its genuine authentic stupidmedia card what I installed out of my vast assortment of silly camera debris....

And really the factory guy is like my relatively low-rent market research — it's hard to tell from the stark assortments at dpreview which ones actually sold in the day, but a camera's presence at the factory guy indicates at least some market penetration, so I don't try buying non-existent silly cameras — a constant threat in my pointless delvings....

4/24/22. Behold a mystery! This is a "recent" 2013? Fujifilm s4430 14mp 26x zoom, of which dpreview will speak not, so tawdry and non-changeable lens and below-$1500 is it. ... Actually it's almost nonexistent on our beloved googled web, so I don't know its dates! I had to look into the manual to see what the zoom was! ... But the reviews are dated on the amazon page.

... But mystery of mysteries, my S4430 has a viewfinder! ... And this crucial feature was hidden! ... Mostly the camera puffery hides the absence of a viewfinder, since cameras without one are useless outdoors and your phone'll work better, but in this case the world has gotten so weary & confused that the ebay seller didn't advertise the viewfinder for his $50 used camera; I had to screen scrape his picture of the back and lighten the image to see it was there and even then I couldn't be sure — the standard scam viewfinderless camera often has an obviously fraudulent "bump" in the right place so it "looks like" a "real" camera, i.e. one with a viewfinder. But this one's actually got it! Cute as a button EVF! ... And a whole new world of ebay depreview-less fujifilm viewfinder cameras opens magically before me!

The S4430 doesn't actually work that great when I installed the batteries and then the SD card a few minutes apart and I had to set the date/date twice — Fuji couldn't afford a dedicated date/time battery like in my beloved Canons, so in a standard alternative it relies on charging-up some wretched capacitor so it'll remember its date/time, which works good if you give it a few hours to charge-up at first, and if you don't leave the battery compartment open too long when taking out the SD card to see the beautiful pictures.

Conspiracy?

No doubt the snootiness of dpreview re my innocent viewfinder fujifilm s4430 is really the popular widespread lovable conspiracy-in-restaint-of-trade, what all the with-it companies use to sell ridiculously-expensive things to stupid people, even 'though the US of A has wonderful rules against such practices, generating income for comparatively inexpensive congressmen. ... And it isn't like fuji got discriminated against and wants to sit-in at Dpreview's lunch counters — fuji's got ridiculously-expensive cameras puffed obsequiously @ dpreview, and they wouldn't want their bargain junk to get in the way of that. ... So it's all good....

4/25/22. So after accidentally buying a second Fuji 3800 in my new-found fuji-with-viewfinder enthusiasm (but I can never have too many silly cameras can I?) I managed to buy a beautiful dpreviewless 2009? Fujifilm s2100 10mp 7x zoom at ebay for a mere $40 (used of course), and thus establishing for all time & eternity the dpreview-omerta axis of the cute lesser Fujifilm cameras.

Of course it may not work when it arrives ... but what fun would it be if these things were all guaranteed on the rocky road of life? ... And it works perfect! Better-than-average camera: the pix are sharp at 100%, which isn't always the case, and it has a separate SD door so one doesn't have to open the battery door to get the pictures.

Some random place on the web produced a probably contemporary $210.93 price, demonstrating I didn't get such a great deal and why dpreview et al has to hide these cameras — they're too good/cheap — the ridiculous changeable-lens cameras start at $500, or probably more by now....

5/8/22. After many a summer maybe I'll run-out of these things, but not yet with today's 2014? Fujifilm s4250 14mp 24x! zoom, another $40 ebay treasure scorned by dpreview. With of course a beautiful EVF. ... My adorable little herd of latter-day EVF fujis are known disparagingly in the 3 remaining camera stores as "bridge" cameras, AKA "kiddie-wheels for those too stupid or not affluent- or many-enough to get a real DSLR or mirrorless or whatever the current thing is this week, on sale, $500 off @ $1500 & up."

But all is dust, including the beloved camera biz super ethical standards. And your phone takes better pictures, except in sunlight where a viewfinder is usually better. ... But I rant & rave, and enjoy it thoroughly.

... And it appears when I bought a stupid viewfinderless camera by mistake, I should've been buying a fuji, which are still available with viewfinders for only a few hundred dollars @ amazon! ... And actually there are others — Panasonic at least — all of them no doubt rigidly unseen by Dpreview and the rest of the camera industry — and the panasonic has a stupid rechargeable battery. ... Of course my stupid mistake was a Canon, to which brand I had an obviously mistaken loyalty, since apparently they can afford to ignore the lower-rent viewfinder "bridge" camera market.

5/8/22. So after my s4250 adventure, I went & bought a brand-new (!!) 2015? Fujifilm s9900W 16mp 50x! zoom for a mere $213 @ amazon. And between when I did that in the afternoon and about 7pm a few hours later, the retail price rose from $199 to $228, no doubt due to my massive purchasing influence. Of course it won't arrive until the UPS boat docks....

This is the first new camera I've bought in a while — certainly in Florida, excluding my embarrassing mistake — and probably since the 2/10 L22. And the s9900w costs about the same as my fabulous used DSLR (in 2016) where I started my latter-day camera adventures....

Really if I wanted one of these silly cameras for cheap, the ~$50 S4430 would probably fill the bill, or the $40 s4250. But I expect my ridiculous brand-new s9900 will have better low-light performance/speed etc., to amaze & amuse me as the covid world lurks menacingly around us. Although actually ol' covid seems to have backed-off for some reason, but I expect it to make a grand re-entrance for the fall congressional contests, if murdering innocent criminals + riots/arson doesn't do the trick....

The De-accessing of the Cameras

So it came to pass that I had too many silly cameras, even 'though I'd sequestered bunches of broken ones into attache cases. And so at last I deaccessed boring working cameras into another attache case, and it was the very attache case I bought long ago back on Long Island in 2013 to protect my precious laptop computer, and the case cost some fabulous sum like $60 because it was so surpassingly cute. And of course was never actually used until today, although the weary years have managed to ding it a bit. ... An ignorant relative mocked me for having stacks of attache cases ever-ready for whatever unforeseen calling might come, and at last my foresighted wisdom is evident, for there are three of them now, filled with cameras, broken and working....

The Non-Arrival

5/14/27: And apparently I just misunderstood the UPS boat schedule, and when amazon said "5/13" they meant "5/18"! ... Or so they say today. ... And really, it's just my fault, as usual, for dealing with the the amazing ethical standards of the camera biz which have apparently been unchanged throughout my life. ... And maybe a nice camera will show-up someday, but more likely not, and/or some piece of junk, and I'll dispute the charge, and another fly-by-night amazon vendor will fade away into the night. 

... The explicitly "used" cameras are really much more fun. ... Right there's an s9900w on ebay for a mere ~$150 used....

The Arrival: not new

5/18/22: the beautiful camera arrives, & as usual I was totally confused and it is a used camera, what it says in the usual tiny print on the original amazon page. I was thinking how this would be the last "new" camera I'd ever buy, considering how annoying the special amazon delayed delivery was, but now I don't even have that dubious frisson ... but at least the thing is now up to $328 @ amazon!

... And of course it's a beautiful amazing camera what takes lovely pictures although it does seem to have the unfortunate sx20-like wheel control which perhaps I'll investigate someday and see how awful it is. ... & I must admit, there's an assortment of ≥$300 brand-new non-Canon cameras @ amazon with viewfinders. ... & I've realized after a few days that my simple error was in imagining there was a $200 new camera with a viewfinder. Can't be done of course in modern camera market technology....