This weekend I mourned the loss of my camera. It had died a noisy death while attempting to focus on… well.  Never mind.  Instead of going into the details of its death, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on its life. In just one year, the trusty little camera took 15,733 photos and 50+ hours of video.  I’d say about 90% of all photos (100% of all videos) on this site were taken with this die-hard camera.  It was banged up, dropped and scratched many times, but it kept giving me the shot I needed.  It didn’t complain much, either.  Oh sure, sometimes it would turn off unexpectedly, complaining about its battery needing replacement (even though it was just charged).  More times than I care to remember it would refuse to shut down, beeping camera-ese about the lens being jammed or something. I know I could have treated it better, kept it in a padded case made of the finest fake fur.  I could have added a protective film over the LCD screen to keep it from being scratched up.  I could have… but I didn’t.  Instead, I treated it like the tough-skinned SOB it was.  The type of camera that scoffed at danger, that laughed at a little water, and did its job in the worst of conditions.  Take photos from a kayak in the ocean?  No problem!  A short video while climbing an active volcano in Nicaragua?  Piece of cake! A one-handed photo out the window of the Oregon coast during a storm while driving on the highway?  But of course!

Canon Powershot 1100 IS

A deceased Canon Powershot 1100 IS

Yes, I mourned for this camera. I almost shed a tear. Almost. But when I got home from the hike, I started shopping for its replacement. OK, truth be told, I knew what the replacement would be months before this one kicked the bucket: the Canon Powershot SD990IS, a powerful 14.7 megapixel camera with 3.7x Optical Zoom, a 2.5-inch PureColor LCD II with anti-glare, anti-scratch coating, and most importantly, a metal alloy shell. Hopefully, this guy can stand the test of time better than the last.

PS – The Canon 1100 died while taking a photo of a butterfly. A frakkin’ BUTTERFLY! Not some awesome photo of a fireworks warehouse explosion, or a mountain lion attacking prey, or even a hungry bear. No, the last photo the shutter would see before it went gently into that good night was a butterfly. *sigh*   At least it was a nice shot.

The final shot

The final image