Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Wait Is Over
For over a year now I have been salivating over a particular camera and lens. I’ve had it on my Amazon wishlist for quite awhile after staring at it daily, multiple times a day, for months. I had a digital camera but it stopped working well a long, long time ago. Every once in awhile I will pick it up and turn it on and it will work for about 10 minutes and then it will stop working again. I’ve had to borrow a camera for many of the pics I’ve taken in the past couple of years for this site, (not all, some), and I started looking for a new camera about two years ago. That’s when I found the camera I would love to have.
But damn it was expensive. Why is it that everything I want is expensive?!
Because of the expense, I never bought it. It was just so much money and I have a hard time parting with that kind of money all at once. So I dreamed, and salivated as I said, and wished and hoped for fabulous tips--which were happening until the hoodlums came along and pretty much took a chunk of that. But that’s ok, it was a rescue, that’s kind of why I exist so, no problems.
Yesterday I decided it was time to get a meat grinder because Serenity is older and she’s missing two of her bottom teeth and has a hard time eating raw chunks. I have to cut her pieces up in to tiny, tiny little pieces and it’s time consuming. I’ve read and read that starting out grinding and working up to bigger pieces while their jaw muscles build up is a good way to go. She wasn’t eating enough, she’s losing weight but I think too fast so since the whole fricken reason I started feeding raw was because of her, I decided I better just go find a meat grinder.
I started in Target since they had some online and none of the stores near me had them. Figures. While I was asking for assistance, I was informed that perhaps BrandSmart would have some. I was told how to get there and off I went.
(I’d like to take a moment to digress here: I went to one Target and looked for meat grinders, couldn’t find any so went up to Guest Services to see if they could call another Target I know about to ask if they had meat grinders before I drove all the way to that store. I waited patiently for my turn and when I went up and asked the service lady if she would do that she said, “You need to get the number and ask one of them, (gesturing towards other Target employees), to call.”
I stared at her for a moment. I then turned around and pointedly looked up at the sign above that said, “Guest Services”, turned back around and said, “Oh. I’m sorry, I thought this was Guest Services. I’m a guest, seeking service. You are not willing to help me?” She wasn’t in to it so I asked for a manager. Manager was very helpful although it took her some time to figure out that ALL I wanted was for them to call the other Target store and ask if they had meat grinders NOT look up the whatever number they were asking me for...I just want to know if they have any on the shelves. After 10 minutes of them calling all types of people, she finally got it and called the other store. Good GOD I would love to live where people speak fluent English and understand and LISTEN to what the other person is saying. How I miss that.)
I found my meat grinder right away and because this store, BrandSmart, was huge and I’ve never been there before, I was a bit overwhelmed. It had two stories and this weird conveyor belt right in the center of the store that ran along the top and then did a spiral all the way to the bottom floor. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. So I looked around to see what else they had to offer for future reference and found myself in the camera section admiring the camera I’ve been drooling over for a year.
It had gone down in price but not that much. I played with it a little bit and admired it and that’s when the sales rep came over. We talked about the camera a bit. He realized I knew exactly what I wanted and knew a lot about this particular camera, no I was not interested in a point and shoot, I want a good camera that will let me do cool things. That’s when he announced that he had just got this new version in, it was like an upgrade to the camera I was looking at and it was cheaper. Not a lot but it was cheaper brand new than the one I wanted a year old.
So we looked at that one. It was even better. How could that be!?
I asked him for specs and he got online to a competitor’s store to show me that “if we show you from another store, you know it’s not made up by us” and that backfired on him because the other store had the same camera on sale for $40 cheaper. So I asked him to match the price. He asked me if I was going to get it. I figured I had been looking at the other camera for over a year, you know what...get the damn thing. I told him if he matched the price and threw in a memory card, I’d buy it.
So he did.
And now I have it.
This is what I am the proud owner of as of yesterday: Nikon D3100. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s my first SLR so I didn’t go for the D7000 (which also costs about $400 more), and this will keep me going for a long time. By the time I’m professional enough for something else, I’ll be able to afford something else. I don’t expect I’m going to need to upgrade for years and years. This camera totally rules. Yesterday’s photos were taken off of this camera and that was having it out of package less than half an hour. I hadn’t explored anything yet.
Today I did and I plan to explore more. Plus, when I start doing this writing for the NaNoWriMo in November, I may not write much here but I can certainly let you all be my guinea pigs with my photography experiments.
Now, the main reason I got this camera, the main reason I said, “OK, let’s do it” yesterday is not because I’m swimming in money. It’s because I had just gone to the bank to put all of my checks in, (I like to save them up until I have about 7-10 just to let my boss know that he doesn’t hold THAT much power over me. It annoys him that I do this but I refuse to stop. It’s a way to let him know that I do not live pay check to pay check so don’t go threatening me with my job all the time like you do others out here), and I also decided to bring my spare change.
See, I’ve been saving my spare change since I started working at my air boat job. This includes the bullshit tips some of the people give out. “Wow! Thirteen cents for your entire family of four! The generosity is overwhelming, you must be sainted immediately!” This also includes some of the shitty tips that my co-workers throw on the picnic tables in disgust. They throw it there because it’s insulting to them and they don’t want anything to do with the spare change. So I pick it up. They know I do, they don’t care that I do and there have been times when they made comments about me doing such a thing.
Talk all you want, assholes. I just got a new camera because of that spare change.
I went to the bank, put my change in the CoinStar machine, deposited directly in to my account and it came out to over $500. Basically I paid about $150 for my awesome, kick ass camera. So I got a telephoto lens to go with it. What should have cost almost $900, I got for about $350. I got the camera-and the lens it comes with, a telephoto lens, a memory card, and a bag for under half of what it would have cost by using that spare change accumulated over 3 1/2 years.
Plus a meat grinder.
So, I will be playing around with it and I’ll be putting up photos here. I’m hoping the shutter speed can be set fast enough to do something I’ve wanted to try for a very long time but I’m not going to talk about until I know if I can or not. I’ve also learned a couple of other tricks I’m going to try and will show you the results.
So, anyway, kids, save that spare change. Pick it up when you see it and put it in a jar or thermos or juice pitcher, (like I did), and one day, take it to the coin machine. You may be surprised at what you have. To me? It’s not money lost because I wasn’t spending it, it wasn’t budgeted and I basically acted like it wasn’t there until the pitcher got full. It’s like free money.
Next time it fills up, I’m putting it in to savings towards my future. But this time, I wanted to get that camera.
