Digital Cameras

As a lot of you know, I don't know much about technology. A friend of mine who is 16 recently told me about something called iTunes. What a cool idea I thought. All he could do was laugh.

The excuse that I've been using for awhile now is that all the current technology was invented while I was in Guinea the first time around (from 2000 to 2002). While I was living in a mud brick hut a few hundred miles from running water, cell phones, blogs, digital cameras, ipods, mp3 players, etc. etc. were all being invented, right? Okay, so that excuse (or rather,fabrication) is getting old. Now that I've jumped into the world of blogging it's time that I put away my old clunky Cannon film camera and go digital. It's not all that practical to pack a ton of film canisters and send negatives home from Guinea to get developed. And even if I did all of that it'd be hard to share photos with everyone that way. One of the points of having this blog is to post and share photos of Guinea with everyone. But before I get ahead of myself, I have to actually buy a digital camera (details...). So I've been slogging through all kinds of websites on digital cameras, camera reviews, company sites, etc. etc. It is mind boggling really, all of the megapixels, optic zooms, LCD monitors, etc. etc.

The bottom line is that I found one that I think might work for us. I've been close to hitting the "buy" button on the website but I just can't bring myself to do it. It feels weird to spend so much money in one click of a button and to know so little about what I'm buying.

I got an email from a friend today and in it she mentioned her camera and what she doesn't like about it. All of a sudden the most obvious thing occurred to me- a lot of people have digital cameras and know a thing or two about them. So I thought I would mention the kind of camera I'm close to buying in case it raises any red flags for anyone. Please let me know. Any other feedback is also welcome.

Basically, the requirements I have are that the camera have at least 8 megapixles (because I'll be supplying photos for a magazine article Matt will be writing for Knucklebones magazine), that it use AA batteries (because we'll be using a solar battery charger and the most common are for AAs) and that it not be out of our price range too much (around $200).

What I found is the Fuji A900. The Fuji website says it's new (I'm not sure what "new" means) so I haven't been able to find specific reviews on this camera. Anyway, the link to one description of it is at: A900
and the description from Fuji is at: Fuji A900

No pressure to check any of this out. All this stuff bores me to death and it's FOR me. So I doubt it will interest anyone too much. But if you have any info. about this camera or cameras in general that you think I need to know before jumping into this, please let me know.

My current to do list includes not only buying a camera but also finding health insurance and figuring out what vaccines we need for Guinea and how to get them. Lately I've been having daydreams and nightmares about deductibles, typhoid fever, and megapixles. All of these things are getting mixed up in my head. I almost asked the Fuji rep what the camera's deductible was....