Sunday, December 27, 2015

The Quest

I Thought, yes, I do think, and here it what I thought, I thought that instead of harassing, haranguing and haunting you before Christmas, when prices are high and everyone is out shopping like mad, waving money in both hands and fighting to get the very latest bargain, I would wait until after the holiday to make with my annual whine about going out and getting yourself a descent camera, when you are still flush with all of the money you got from your friends and family who were too lazy and thoughtless to go and get you an actual, thoughtful, personalized and desired present and instead slipped a few bucks in a cheap card and said, “I'm done, yeah!”

I mean let's face it. The kids split as soon and they food was taken away from the table and the thing on the couch won't move until after the last game is played on New Year's Day and you've already cleared away the wreckage from the present glut and the tree doesn't have to go up for another week and unless you got a new, nifty neat and cool super wide-screen. LCD, internet-ready television you have no chance of getting the remote out of enemy hands and into someone's who doesn't think Tampa Bay vs Chicago with three wins between them is something which should claim three hours of your precious time and of that only ninety minutes will be actual game and the rest will be old Christmas commercials and you won't see anything new until they bring out the Stupid Bowl ads sometime in late January, so why not count up all that cash and go see what you can get for it if you are willing to spend a little time on the computer?

Okay, so I know that your heart is in the right place and you want to do the right thing and that means shopping local and Fred Meyer and Wally World will have some fair prices on camera equipment either this week or the next and you really do want to support your friends and neighbors but you won't get the best bang for your buck if you do and you do have to watch closely and make sure that that camera advertised at $399.99 is the newest model and not the model they just took out of production and you could get the same thing at Amazon for a hundred dollars less and besides you don't want to blow all of your mad money on one thing so let's have a think about this and see.

You could look at Craig's List and please don't cause you will lose your mind and all of your cash and not get much in return and when something goes wrong and it breaks you won't be able to get a dime out of it and the seller will just laugh and change their email address. And besides people think when they sell their old stuff it is made out of gold and they price it that way and why should you pay four hundred dollars for a camera which was taken out of production so long ago that your kid didn't even know how to program their Ipad and you know how long ago that was so...

Let's take a look at what you should do.


KEH is the best site for used photographic equipment and will have a larger selection and better rices than just about anybody. They do repair work and on the off chance that you buy something from them which breaks and isn't covered by their warranty they can fix it for you.


B & H is number two but they have some pretty neat things


Including Gift Cards so you can hide your cash in one of them and the kid won't sneak it out of your purse when you aren't looking and take it down to the local beer store and get high and wreck the car with the mayor's daughter, who is only fifteen in the backseat with just her smile and some texture pantyhose and the policewoman thinks every teenager is a walking hormone and should be neutered and charges the kid with felony assault and asks the D.A. if the Death Penalty applies.


Exceptionally wide selection and they carry lower-end items which you might want to extend your shopping pleasure and they have gift cards which you should refer back to the last paragraph to see why that might be a good idea.


And just because they are our neighbors to the north doesn't mean that they don't offer exceptional quality and value for your buck, so don't be a snob and take a look and see if they have what you are looking for.

You want to buy new and you think that any camera which isn't in the original packaging is just some other guys garbage and you know it will take your money from your pocket straight to Goodwill.

There is nothing at all wrong with new. It just costs an arm and a leg. The new Canons have a fifty megapixel sensor and take sharper images than a medium format film camera of just a few years ago. That is sharp and you can brag about it to your neighbors, but is it what you need?

I got all I need in my phone.

There is no getting around that camera in your phone, it is handy and in the right hands it can take fantastic pictures. But it is just a camera in a phone and no matter how many megapixels it has they are tiny and not all megapixels are the same. Sure when you go to the Stupid Bowl and see Katy Perry fall out of her top and Katy Perry does have something to fall out with which is not at all true of Taylor Swift and if she fell out there would be nothing but gasps and clucking and you wouldn't even have to cover the children's eyes and the thing on the couch might not even stop snoring, so even if you have a phone camera what would you get taking a picture that nobody would want to buy and even the most desperate hacker wouldn't hack your phone to get so it is just not worth the effort.

No, you need a quality camera and it doesn't have to be new.

ELECTRONICS WORK OR THEY DON'T

That is a fact and no matter how old they are if they are working they will probably keep tight on working and that is a very good thing for you cause it means all those guys who got the new cameras for Christmas will have nothing to do with their old cameras and they won't be able to get the prices you see on Craig's List so they will either have to store them in the closet or sell them to their uncles or give them to Goodwill and that's where you come in.

You can buy one a coupla generation old and save a wad of money and have a camera which will last until your kids are bitching about all of the stuff they have to get rid of now that the old folks have gone to the big art show and why didn't they just get rid of all of it or take out a lot of insurance and open a gas jet?
I don't know what to get.

Have you looked? Okay, so you didn't. There's a fix for that.


This site will help you compare the cameras you look at and then you can see a numerical deferential which tells you which one Snapsort thinks is better and you can see if you agree.

And before I go here are a few to start looking at.

Nikon D90

Canon XSI, T1i, T2i. T3

Pentax Kx, Kr, K30, K50

Sony a33, a55



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