I was outside this weekend doing yardwork, and I was so pleased with how everything was looking that I put our nice new e2 batteries (they say they work well in high drain devices) in our HP Photosmart 215 camera and headed outside. I tried to take a couple pictures, then gave the camera to Michael, who snapped one then said “Hmm.. it’s still at 100, I don’t think it’s working right.” Then he got a Compact Flash error. Crappy. I don’t know exactly what happened, or why, but it seems that our flash card might be dead.
Now as you all know, our digital camera sucks. It’s old, and it was inexpensive, and it’s HP. First of all, to be expected with cheap cameras, the pictures are fuzzy and turn out horrible if the subject is moving at all. It eats batteries like crazy (I guess this is fairly typical of all digital cameras though…). But even worse, the flash no longer works, and the power input for a cord is so flakey that we can’t even use it. We’ve dealt with these issues because when you’re on a budget a digital camera is quite a purchase if it’s not absolutely necessary.
The death of this flash card was the end of it though. I’m NOT buying a flash card for this horrible thing. We’re planning a trip to West Virginia next week and I don’t want to be without a camera! So later this afternoon I’m going to spend some time scanning digital camera review sites to find something. I’ve been out of the market for so long.
So any suggestions would be quite welcome, I just have a few conditions:
1. removable media (whether it be flash cards or whatever)
2. good picture quailty
3. works with linux (our HP one didn’t and it was a cause of much cursing)
4. under $400 (I’d probably like to stay in the $200-300 range, but if there is a camera that it’s so amazing as to break that barrier up to $400 I’m willing to consider it)
I won’t be shopping online, just because of time restraints.
Now I’m going to head outside and work on getting the big rocks out of the soil that I’m putting back in the hole where the rhododendron used to be. This way it’ll be easier to dig up when we finally decide on the perfect tree %) I want to get this bit of yard work out of the way so I can shower and walk down to the library this afternoon to return Foundation and Empire which I just finished (btw, I totally saw that ending coming!). *wanders off*