Tuesday, September 12, 2006

more on cameras (and the way we live and function is this complicated world)

I can’t let go. Isn’t there a saying about returning to the farm after a year on the Boulevard St. Germain?

I tasted the Sony D-SLR alfa 100 and I am having a hard time packing it up and sending it back.

True, the smaller camera I would use in its stead (the new, far less expensive Sony H5) is lovely. And it takes quality photos. I mean, can you really tell that this…


september 06 080

…was taken by the H5 rather than the Alfa 100? Of course you can’t.

But I can.

But Nina, the world can’t tell. You’ll save money. The H5 is light. The H5 will take on a conversion telephoto lens giving you fantastic capabilities. You’re just clinging to the Alfa 100 because it buys you status. You like the idea of looking pseudo professional, with ten pounds of camera dangling from your neck. When oh when will you use it over and beyond next weekend in France? Give it up! The H5 is the way to go!

All the above has been said to me, to my face, in the past 12 hours. It makes sense. Absolutely.

Nina, do you know what the national savings rate is for France? (high) In Japan? (higher) In the US? (in negative numbers) Are you going to contribute to this national malady of spending more than you have?

If I were living in France, I’d be saving too, to purchase that house in the south where family and friends would come each summer for a protracted six week vacation and I would play and frolic to my heart’s content in the hours that I am not working and I would spend Euro cents for quality local wines!

The cameras, their packaging, receipts, printouts, etc are strewn all over the dining table. I am paralyzed. I feel I am about to capriciously fling an ax of doom on one of two players, not unlike what I have witnessed on Project Runway.

One must go. I love them all. tick tock tick tock…