We find that we are in the market for a camera again.  Our history with cameras hasn't been too great starting with L(7)'s second Christmas when the one we had at the time flaked out on Christmas Day.  We frantically headed to the store for a new camera (cha, ching) so we could have pictures of the Holiday.  The old camera had to be taken to a lab to have the film safely removed so we wouldn't lose any photos currently on it.

We bought our first digital a couple of years after that but I rarely used it except for listing things on ebay or sharing quick snapshots via e-mail.  The reason?  It wasn't because I was married to 35mm, it was because I didn't like the fact that it didn't date stamp the photos.  It's horrible to be sitting there staring at a picture going "was she 6, 8 or 10 months in that photo?".  Of course you can't really go by the clothing she's wearing because "seasons" don't really exist here.  Erik wanted to be done with 35 mm and my only condition was that it have an automatic date stamp.  Good luck finding that!  He found one and all was right in our photo taking world until we realized the camera was a lemon.  It sucked the life out of batteries so fast and we'd often be caught at an event unable to take photos because they'd died.  All the while we'd look at each other saying, "didn't we just change those batteries?"

Then, it begins to "zoom error" on us.  If we use the zoom, then it's likely to error and shut off the next time we go to use it.  Of course magically, it might work when you only wanted to photograph the cat...ugh!  Lately, it's taken to just not coming on periodically.  Change the batteries, still nothing....grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  We haven't had this camera very long at all (just over a year maybe).  If the weather changes, it stops working too.  Which as I've already mentioned, the weather can change instantly around here.  Sudden cold, sudden humidity, sudden heat, sudden barometric pressure changes....nope, sorry, won't come on.  We've been at many a sporting event, holiday, celebration...whatever and had it die or just refuse to power on.

The final straw for me was a week or so ago.  Erik, A(3) & J(20mo) were washing the cars.  It was too adorable so I ran in for the camera.  Power on....lights flicker...shuts off....grrrrrr.....change batteries....power on.....lights flicker....shuts off.  I repeated this at least a dozen times before giving up.....sigh.  So, here we are, looking for a new camera.  I'm to the point that I don't care about date stamp, it's pointless if the camera doesn't work when you need it to.  I really don't want to return to 35mm.  We're looking into the Cannon PowerShot a510 or a520.  Hopefully whatever we go with next will last while.