About three weeks ago our Olympus C4040 Digital Camera quit working. I'm not griping too loud, because it literally took thousands of photos and served us for over seven years. Of course that service record doesn't come close to my sister Jan, who bought a Point & Shoot 35mm before traveling to South America in the late 1970s and only gave it up this year. Even if I pale by comparison to my sister, we got every penny of value out of the Olympus - only to have the lens get stuck inside and not come out. That's fine, but there's a problem.I don't have money to buy another one!
A little thing called "life" tempered by "responsibility" keeps me from breaking out the plastic and buying one of the many 450-MagoogaPixel Digital Saviors that are being advertised by camera companies right now, desperately I might add as they try to make up for lost billions in slump economy sales, even if the cameras are at prices far below what we paid for the old Olympus. It's hard to justify buying one when the van needs brakes and the kids need cheesy noodles. Plus I'm having a lot of fun rediscovering film photography with my two 35mm cameras and the Holga. Sure, I still have my digital cell phone camera - which I used recently in lieu of the broken Olympus to document a visit by over 50 Model Ts to the area. But the phonecam has no flash, and is a few clicks less convenient than an honest to goodness digital camera. So what does a guy do, when there isn't big green to buy a digital camera and he's looking for recapture some of that convenience until the money is available?
"Pull a Clark" and buy a cheapo used one.
It just so happened that last Monday I took The Clark Boys to Value Village in search of short-sleeved work shirts (success BTW - two shirts for $10...wearing one right now). On the way to the register we rolled down the camera/ceramic figurine aisle and found the Olympus D360L pictured above. Aside from having a massive $20 pricetag, it took the exact same memory card of the camera that just broke. The "SmartMedia" 128MB card, incidentally, is also the dinosaur of memory cards and won't work in anything else. So in a way I'm recycling - or the term I like to use is "retrocycling" because the D360L is older than David and I'm still using part of the broken camera.
In fact the D360L serves its purpose just fine. A coworker told me this was the same model of camera that he took on a trip to Disneyland in the earlier part of the decade, shooting hundreds of pictures. "For what it is, that's a good camera," he told me. Olympus even still provides the manual online. In it's finest setting, it will take a picture with just enough quality to make an acceptable 4x6 print or a nice addition to a website. The lens has a bit of wide angle from what I can tell, because you can fit a little more into the picture than expected. In short, it's like any 90s era Point & Shoot without the film. Including the snazzy $2 camera case, total purchase with tax came to $25.
I will eventually get my preferred digital camera, maybe around Christmas if Sherry is reading this, but until that time this one will go everywhere we do. I don't consider it a rip off paying $25 for a ancient digital camera; I think of it as extending the use of my broken Olympus by paying an extra quarter-benjamin. Rock on Retro-Didge!
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