Thoughts

I headed off to Washington, D.C. to ring in the New Year with friends. It should not be too surprising that I wanted pictures to commemorate the holiday night out, but for me it is not as easy as just taking my camera with me. I have a Canon Digital Rebel EOS that I love. I do not put myself in situations to use it as often as I would like, but I love the camera.

The problem lies in the fact that I feel pretty self-conscious when I hold it. As an SLR camera, it is bigger than most other digital cameras and I often feel like a tourist rather than a casual picture taker carrying it around; especially when photographing people. I have actually been told that I make people feel uncomfortable when I take their picture with it.

At the party we were attending on New Year's Eve, I would know two people well, a small handful of people not so well and the other people not at all. I had hoped to make friends rather than enemies and I felt by leaving my gargantuan camera at home I could better facilitate that goal. I would instead bank on one of the two people I would know at the party to bring his digital camera and capture the night in my stead.

He forgot his camera.

He was able to redeem himself in my esteem to some extent by suggesting that we swing by a drug store and pick up one of those disposable digital cameras he had heard about. My internal conflict kicked in between my skepticism about throw-away-technology quality and my desire for pictures of our night out. The price was the deciding factor.

At CVS they sell disposable digital cameras with capacity for 25 pictures for roughly $15. They told us that for $10 our pictures would be "developed" and we would get them on a CD. Thus a total of $25 for 25 pictures. $1 per picture may be cost prohibitive to some; I was not overly thrilled, but made my decision and bought the camera.

I was very impressed *overall* with the disposable digital camera I bought that day. The camera does hold up to 25 pictures, but though disposable acts in many regards as any other digital. You are not able to cycle through the pictures you have taken, but there is a display window that will show you the last picture taken. If you are not happy with the picture when it shows up on display, you may even delete it. (Note: If you delete the most recent, you are neither able to see the picture before it nor delete it. You may only see and/or delete the most recent picture taken.)

The display was rather poor quality, but for the price I cannot complain. The only issue I have with it is that I took some pictures where my hand was too close to the flash and I distorted a few of them as a result. I was not able to distinguish between pictures when I had done this and those when I had not on the display.

My only other complaint with the camera was its inability to center the picture where I wanted. No matter what I pointed the camera at the picture was always slightly left or slightly right. I would be more able to compensate for this issue if it was static. Unfortunately it seemed when I would step left to correct the centering I should have stepped right. When I would step right, I would need to have stepped left. For some pictures that I took after the holiday on a tourist jaunt (to Washington National Cathedral), this was acceptable. When shooting immobile subject matter there are no worries. Had people been posing for me they would not have had the patience to keep smiling while I took picture after picture to make it come out correctly.

Image quality was not very good on the single prints that came with my CD. While not surprised, I was still slightly disappointed. This left my expectations for the images on my CD pretty low as a result.

I am pleased to report on the quality of the digital images. I do think the pictures from the Cathedral turned out very well. I am not so happy with the pictures from the party, but that is partially because my hand by the flash as I mentioned above.

The experience, I can admit, was a positive one. I still wish I had taken my camera and gotten over my concerns about using it though. My new rule is to take my camera with me on every trip, whether I plan to use it or not. At least then I have it if I feel I want to use it. I do not plan to ever buy a disposable digital camera again, but I think you can all feel confident in the purchase if you find yourself in need.