I have never liked closed doors.

Way back in 1968, I joined the annual staff at my junior high school as the typist, but I always wanted to go into one room that was always closed and locked: the darkroom.

One day the two school photographers let me into the darkroom to see how the pictures were developed. I thought that was the coolest thing, pictures magically appearing on paper just because they poured some liquid on them. Eventually I got to be a school photographer, too, and when I joined the annual staff for my high school, I was both typist and photographer. Being a photographer meant that I got into all sporting events free of charge. What an awesome job! And an addiction.

When I got to college at Texas A&M University in 1973, the second thing I bought was a Canon EF camera (the first thing was a Texas Aggie shirt!). In 1978 I upgraded to a Canon A1, and from then until 1993 I had a room full of camera lenses, filters, photo albums, and slides. Alas, I sold everything when I moved to San Diego in 1993.

As one of the first -- if not the first -- home inspectors in San Diego County to provide pictures in the report, I got back into photography slightly. Not too much because my cameras would have to be used by nine employees, some of whom liked to destroy cameras, leave them under the foundations of a house 100 miles away, or tell me they lost them or had them stolen so that I would buy a new one and they could keep the lost/stolen one -- LOL

(No, I wasn't dumb, especially when they showed up a couple of weeks later telling me that they had purchased the identical lost/stolen camera at a clearance sale. I just considered it a perk for them for jobs well done, although it was a little frustrating that they would lie, but I always took that into account when I evaluated them for raises and bonuses.)

I've gone through about 20 of the cheapest digital cameras over the past eight years, but early this morning I bought an expensive camera. Unfortunately, I have to wait for it since I bought it from an East Coast company (saved California taxes) -- it is being shipped by UPS ground.

After spending the past few days bidding on cameras over at swoopo.com (and wasting $175), I decided to just go the normal route and search online for cameras. As with any company selling its goods online, do your due diligence and check into the company. I think it's also a good idea to make your purchase using some sort of a protection policy. Various protection policies are offered by credit card companies, eBay, PayPal, some manufacturers, and some retail companies.

The camera I chose is the
Canon EOS Rebel XSi. It has
12.2 megapixels, and I saw the results of one yesterday when I was trying to help one of Steve Hall's Clients. I chose a package deal that gives me the camera, a 28-80 mm lens, a 75-300 mm lens, a 2x telephoto conversion lens, a .5x wide angle conversion lens, an 8-GB SD card, a SD USB card reader, a lithium ion battery, and a battery charger, along with a few other trinkets. Total cost was $764; shipping was free by UPS ground.

The four lenses that it comes with are not Canon lenses, which could be problematic, but I remember when I had my other two Canon cameras, the Canon lenses were so expensive that all of my friends and I never used camera-make lenses, prefering the generic brands, and we never had any problem. So, thirty years later, I'm willing to take a chance with these four lenses. We'll see.