Canon Xsi « quasify

Err 99 sucks and makes me want to cry.

If you follow my little section of the photoblog you may have seen the sad news that my big camera has (…maybe) bit it, not with another loud flashy bang across the pavement it deserved, but a sad & sucky ambiguous error message indicating Something, Somewhere has gone wrong. Honestly – I’ve been using SLR less and less on a day to day basis since I got my new phone, but it gives me considerable anxiety to consider not fixing or replacing it. So I’m not gonna do that. I want to have a real camera, whether I still carry it every day or not. I do though think it’s prudent to stall a couple months til I’ve squirreled away a little cash (and until the new T4i comes out).

Today ends training week #7 of 18 for New Orleans Marathon. The past few days have been the toughest temperature of the season but I am still frostbite free.

Welcome to my bad karma.

After a fine day out and about yesterday I arrived home safe and sound, only to have my SLR fly out of my camera bag and bang along down the hill by my house a good distance. My prime lens took one for the team, breaking clean in half. The camera body suffered some damage as well – the contacts that communicate with the lens are not connecting properly anymore. Poor camera barely made it past it’s first birthday (and it’s not like there wasn’t foreshadowing).

Anyway, this is not good stuff. Bad fiscally, worse for me mentally. It’s made my life feel even more disjointed and aimless than usual.

Fortunately, some of quasify’s (semi-anonymous?) benefactors recently gave me a somewhat uncomfortably large small business grant towards resolution #4, wide angle lens acquisition. I have been debating between two options (the Sigma 10-20 or the Canon 10-22), both of which will require a functioning body to be useful.

So here’s my plan, barring a better suggestion. I’m shipping this guy back to Canon for a repair quote. If that comes back prohibitively high (say, more than $200) I’m going to bite the bullet and get one of the new T2i bodies, three generations up from my XSi. And once that spending seal is broke, I’ll get a replacement 50mm and whichever of the wides looks better after checking them out in person.

The lesson learned here is to securely clip the camera bag shut. And be more careful. And buy the extended warranty. And have exceptionally kind & generous friends.

Survival of the Fittest

A little natural selection in action for today’s poll. Which of the following do you think survived today’s sand blast attack? THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

New new ride

Old new ride, meet new new ride. Now if I could just get the TX1 fixed my life would be perfect.

Not quite carcass pickin time yet

I stopped by Circuit City today, feeling optimistic because things were going my way today, having gone surprisingly smoothly at the DMV (despite me showing up with expired and/or missing documents). It also seems like they’ve been going out of business for about three years now, maybe I could find a deal or two on one or three of the cameras I’ve been thinking over. The plot above is the last three weeks of prices of a Canon XSi from camel camel camel – (utterly fantastic name there) – which tracks the surprisingly volatile prices on Amazon. But regardless of the good deal vs bad deal on that plot, you’re for sure getting a better deal than the liquidators at Circuit City are offering. Full MSRP for the XSi is (apparently) $799, but since they like your face they’ll do you a favor and knock a full TEN PERCENT off. For the math challenged that’s still clean off the top of the Amazon plot. Thanks for that guys, really. You’re too kind. Yet oddly enough, the place was packed.

XSi

I’m not much of one for posting commercials but I’ll make an exception here. I’ve always liked the concept of using sequential stills to form videos – I’ve tried this a couple of times (529, An Easter Afternoon) but rather prefer Robbie’s 3 Days. This commercial does the same but breaks away from using full frame shots, connecting scenes with the visual football motif. I’ve also been fighting intense gadget-lust towards this XSi since it came out a few weeks back (repeated attempts at anti-consumerism self-hypnosis have not proved to be curative). From what I’ve read it shoots and writes to memory considerably more rapidly than either the 300d or the 400d (in RAW mode, these guys can lag down for upwards of 30 seconds). Plus is lighter, has live preview and uses SD instead of these giant CF cards. And considering that my TX1 fell apart in my hands today, I feel particularly manipulable to camera related pitches. The rational part of my brain knows it’s just a waste of money to buy more crap, that this isn’t the enlightened path to happiness. The irrational part knows where I keep the credit cards.

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