A80 meet A1000IS

My Canon A80 has been on its last leg for the past few months - problems surfaced at the Open the Bottle Night when red lines started appearing on the screen and in pictures. It only happened every once in a while and if I hit the camera hard enough they went away. Its still functional but also had a few friends giving me a hard time every time I pulled the camera out - I guess its kind of large relative to all the new cameras out there and the screen is pretty small with only a 1.5" screen and that red line problem kept resurfacing and I'd have to re-pose everyone to do retakes.

So I decided this past Monday that I was going to buy a new camera with my craigslist money (got really hooked on craigslist when I was rapidly selling all of Brigitte's furniture and proceeded to sell my dining room table, bar stools and mountain bike). Being the time management nazi that I am, I allotted an hour and a half before Monday Night Football (yes I know once again good thing I work from home...). Set out for Best Buy armed with my Circuit City and Ritz Camera ads (I was shooting to make it to three stores in my hour and a half - if you know me, you probably know that really wasn't realistic). Walked straight to the camera section (very uncharacteristic of me, although I did glance at the front table that advertised $5.99 xbox games - I don't even have an xbox!!!) and spotted the A1000IS. Apparently it had just been released (or as I later found out from looking on the web it was released yesterday and Best Buy must have put it on the floor early) because the guy couldn't answer any of my "comparing" questions. Anyways it took me about 10 minutes to decide that I wanted this camera - I loved my Canon A80 so I was positive I would love the newer model that was just released. Bet you're thinking, "wow - hour and twenty minutes to spare".

There's more to this story...

The sales guy then proceeds to tell me that he should have clocked out 6 minutes ago and hands me to another sales guy who then asks a question that I think he now wishes he could take back, "let's get you a memory card and case". Memory card took a few minutes but the case took - yep you guessed it - the remainder of the time you thought I had to spare. How is that possible??? Well you have to consider size, color(s), leather vs fabric, zipper vs flap over secured by velcro. So I ended up with the one in the picture that fits the camera pretty well, colors that make me happy, fabric and flap over secured by velcro like my old one. I like to take pictures while I'm doing other things (remember biking and taking pics) so I need to be able to get to the camera with one hand. Luckily this process was between 315 -445p so not really any other customers so the sales guy stuck with me the entire time.

Anyways here's the old camera, new camera and THE CASE. The new camera is smaller, lighter, 2.5" screen, slightly more zoom, more megapixels just in case I want to print 14 x 16" pictures, uploads pictures to the computer faster and so far doesn't have any red line interference.

My A80 has gone to my camera graveyard.