As you can probably see, I have at long last bought a camera. I’ve taken a first few pictures of my house so I can show my dear ones in the States how I’m living, in the process adorning this page with a picture of my back door.
It’s a simple, little camera of the point-and-shoot variety (a Canon A1100) and not at all expensive. It takes lovely pictures to my untrained eye. But whenever I buy anything I feel slightly sick afterward. The more expensive it was, the sicker I feel. I suspect my husband of blessed memory had some nefarious operant conditioning performed on me while I slept because otherwise I can’t explain this. I used to love to shop.
But that is nothing compared to the sheer terror that awaits when you get the camera home and open the box. Then you have to contend with finding where the batteries go, how to open the place where they go, insert the memory card and figure out what all those little buttons with the unintelligible symbols instead of actual words do. And heaven help you if you press the wrong one. At least the instructions were mercifully in blessed English. Of course, in the olden days you just had to know how to load the film.
Oddly enough, the hardest part was transferring the pictures to the computer. I say “oddly” because I work with computers all day long and I’m not afraid of them and I’m not mystified by them. I actually like them. But try as I might I could not get the computer to recognize the camera. Two phone calls to the service department of the camera store were not much help. Then in desperation I rang my friend, Drora, who’s a wiz with all things technical. “Use the USB port at the back of the computer instead of the front,” was her advice. Presto, it worked like a charm.
I plan to illustrate these pages with my photos in the fullness of time. For the present, I’m still a little shaken and suffering from technoshock. It will pass. I will learn how to use all this stuff. But my question for the universe is this: why is nothing ever easy?
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