Farewell to a Friend

There are some mechanical things that somehow breed attachment in us humans, whether it be a car, a watch or in my case a silly little camera. I have invested thousands in equipment to make sure that I stay on the cutting edge of the digital SLR market to give the best result for my clients, but ironically my own personal camera, the one I have taken on all my trips, to all the family occasions and even to the birth of my child has been a 2 megapixel 6 year old Canon Elph. It’s just a simple little point and shoot, no manual controls and nothing to differentiate it from the millions just like it but somehow I grew attached.

In 2002 I bought it, it was my first digital camera and I took it everywhere, recording most of my memories from the last six years. It went to Spain, France and England for six months when I studied abroad, out to the Canadian rockies for three weeks of wet and cold backpacking and repeatedly got soaked on lake Michigan when a friend and I had time to go out sailing. I abused it, lost it, found it back, dropped it in lakes, let my 10 year old brother use it and hoisted it to the top of sailboat masts, but it just kept working, until a week ago. It finally died and Canon says it costs more to fix than to get a new one. I am amazed that it lasted this long quite frankly, but I still am a little sad it is gone. When you think about a camera, it is usually just a tool, something that is used but not appreciated and this is totally true of my camera and exactly the reason I liked it so much. It went everywhere I did, never complained and never seemed to care how I treated it, just kept doing its job and for that I will miss it a little. Here are a few samples from the fun it had in its glorious youth. Nothing amazing, but it didn’t like to show off too much, just did the job.