It is time for me to pick a new, everyday camera. The little pocket size baby, my sweetheart gave me for Christmas a couple of years back, has seen it’s best a while ago. As it is always with me, every day. In my bag, in my trouser pockets, in my golfbag, in my jacket. No wonder, dust and dirt have found a way into it, so every picture I take has a distinct dark shadow on the top left half on it. I circumferrenced this with choosing according image sections, allowing me to edit away the shaded areas later on the computer. This gets a bit tedious after a while. And sometimes I forget to pay attention to this set-back while photographing, ruining otherwise nice shots. So a new camera has been on my mind for quite a while.

Times have changed a lot, since digitalism has taken over photography. I am not a very technical person, and never was. I just assumed, the digital pocket cameras are the sons and daughters of former pocket cameras, now able to do, what in my days still at the profession, a good SLR could do. Alas, there exists an entire new crossover line of cameras, somewhere between pocket cameras and SLRs, called bridge cameras, nowadays. And SLRs are still SLRs. Too expensive, too akward to handle in everyday live (if you don’t take pictures for a living, having to get maximum output always, in which case you put up with toting bags full of lenses and flash units around).

As I need a camera at work often, taking pics of the site and the sport, I decided to look for a very good zoom capacity and a bright, big viewfinder. As displays don’t work so well out in the sun. And out of habit I was also focussing on good quality lenses. I was very surprised, to find brand names, I would have associated with computers and TVs rather than cameras, like Panasonic or Sony, offering bridge cameras. And not too shabby ones. Old brands, once considered cheap rubbish, like Pentax also crossed my search, listed with top rankings on various platforms.

I got confused, so I decided, to go for a name with an impeccable reputation in photography: Nikon. I picked two different models on offer, to have a closer look at and off I was to a shop, to talk to someone knowledgeable in this jungle of new technology. To be surprised once more. I got the full talk on GPS and WIFI functions. I thought, I was shopping for a camera. Honestly, I usually know where I am, while taking a picture, why would I need GPS? However, mailing pics straight from the camera to your computer is a charming thought. But then a digital habit of mine came to mind, developed since the time, I was still limited to how ever many rolls of film I had brought along: taking zillions of pictures. I considered the time it would take, to mail them all. The battery capacity, this process might take. And made another decision: not necessary. I am not working for a newsroom, after all. Things can wait, until I am back at the computer, loading the images from an SD card or whatever storage medium there is, to my files with pics.

So I steered the young man back to my essentials, good lens and good optical zoom, if possible, also a bright, nice viewfinder on top. Turns out, he is a very knowledgeable chap. In the end convincing me, to consider a camera, I never would have picked myself, ever. But my mind was set on Nikon, already. So I didn’t decide anything just yet. To give myself time. And involve my sweetheart, too. He and his mum will give me the camera for my birthday. As soon as I set him loose, he never left the computer to read up everything there is to know about bridge cameras. He is good at this. Took me back to the shop yesterday, to have a look at his choice of camera. Have me compare it with the camera I was thinking about getting. And he was right. So, very soon, I’ll have a new camera, that is not a Nikon. But with Carl Zeiss lenses and a huge zoom range, made by an Asian company known for phones and TVs. What a surprise.