Chalerm was on a field trip with this school last week, and needed a camera to make his report. I didn’t want to give him my camera, as it is too expensive to risk. My fears were confirmed when Chalerm said his friend, who had brought his own camera to take pictures both for him and Chalerm, had dropped it in a canal.
But the episode started our discussion about buying a digital camera again. I have stuck to film, which gives great quality, certainly better than small digicams. But The Boy wants a digicam and I have been tempted to get one too for the fun of it.
We ended up buying a Minolta X31 in Maboonkrong. It was 7300 baht after Chalerm had haggled. I am on my guard in shops in Asia. They sometimes like to give you the same camera that has been fingered by customers in the shop for months, but without any discount. I told them I wanted a new-out-of-the-box camera. We got one but had to wait for them to fetch it from somewhere outside the mall.
It might be a sign of me getting old that Chalerm is quicker to figure out how to use the camera than I am. Chalerm loves to show off how clever he is with the buttons and menus. In my family I was always the one to be clever with electronic while the elders looked on with puzzlement. Now I am the puzzled one. This goes for mobile phones and the DVD player too. I guess I am not a teenager anymore. However, if something serious needs to be done in Photoshop I am still master of my domain. 