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Time for a little history lesson on my camera woes. Seems I just can’t get exactly what I want these days when it comes to cameras. I had a good camera for quite awhile, but then it had complications and me getting another camera run into complications. Here is the story:
When we arrived in the Philippines in May 2010, we brought with us a camera/video from the US. It is/was a Nikon Coolpix L20 with 10 megapixels, a 3.6x zoom and a 3 inch LCD. I like that camera, but then something simple went wrong with it that actually does not even affect the pictures, but makes it difficult to impossible to use. The compartment that holds the batteries in will not close while the batteries are in. When they are out, it closes. No clue what happen. I had Juvic bring it downtown to see about getting it fixed, but she said that they said they could not fix it. I figured that if a Filipino could not find a way to fix it, it was not fixable. My next step was to wrap some tape around the camera to hold the battery cover down. That works at times, but then the tape comes loose, especially when it is hot outside, and the batteries just drop out. Of course when the batteries die, and they are pretty old rechargeable batteries, I have to take the tape off, charge the batteries and start the taping job all over again. Also now it seems that the memory card I have been using is defective. When it is in it says it is in write protect mode. Well normally you just push the little thingy down and it is ‘out’ of write protect. Well the little thingy is not there anymore. Maybe the camera got dropped one too many times and it broke. I suppose just buying a new memory card would do it, but if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Lita and Juvic bought me a smart phone. A Samsung something or another, model Y. I’m not a big cell phone person anyway. It had a nice camera on it and I even used it to do my Navarro St. video, but the rest of the phone was too complicated for me to use. Looking back now, I should have just kept it and continued using it for a camera and not worried so much about the phone difficulties. It could have been mostly a camera, with benefits. However, instead of doing that, I sold it to Titing. He needed a better phone for the Pepsi business and it seemed like a good thing at the time. Of course we sold it to him for a little less than what we purchased it for, so that kind of sucked too, but it’s cool.
After selling that phone I had to wait a couple of months before I was able to finally figure out a way to buy another phone/camera. I wasn’t thinking at the time about the “no phone really needed, just a camera”. I still had it in my head that I need a cell phone also. Almost everyone has a cell phone around here and it just seems odd to be without one, in that sense. Anyway I did buy another phone/camera at W T Go downtown. Of course it is not a ‘smart’ phone and I looked at a few of them before deciding on this one. It only cost me P990. It says it is a Nokia, but otherwise I have no idea the name of it. It is nice looking and it is a dual sim phone (which I didn’t know about), but there are a couple of problems with it.
The first problem is that it does not have a memory card or even a place for one. All it uses is phone memory and that is not too much. It holds about a dozen or so pictures and then it is full. The second problem, and the bigger problem for me, is that the pictures it takes do not come out very large. They are only 176 x 220, so they are not very good for putting on this blog. The smart phone camera had pictures of 1600 x 1200, so that was good. The first camera has pictures that are 3648 x 2736, which is good, but maybe too big at times.
So that’s it. Right now I can either take the small pictures or battle with the tape to get the larger pictures, after/if I buy a new memory card. I have plans to get another camera, just a camera this time, but I have plans for a lot of things and most of them usually do not work out for one reason or another. I hear they have cameras that actually show the GPS of something when you take the pictures. That would be a good thing for this blog, especially for my Calbayog Popular Hotels and Resorts map. I could give people exact locations that way. It would help me with another map that I would like to start too, a map of the more popular restaurants in the area. Heck I could even do the doctor/dentist offices and probably anything else. Now all I need is a big round tuit, that way I can say that I finally got around to it.
Somewhat in relation to this, I found an online radio that I have been listening to. It is “I Am A Texan Online Radio”. Actually I think it is all recorded, but it lasts for several hours before it repeats. Check it out to see if it’s something you like. I’m actually listening to it now. It has some songs that I have not heard before because Country Music is not exactly played on the radio around here often.
Salamat Y’all
