Say Cheese!

I really have an incredible Jones to get a new digital camera. This happens every year around this time but it's worse than ever. I'm mentally going through an inventory of my stuff trying to figure out what I can sell on eBay, at a garage sale or to the pawn shop to raise money. I'm even thinking about seeing if I could pick up some hours at Hastings, where I used to work part time.

What's the problem? The two cameras I'm looking into buying are $1,000.00 (The Sony Cybershot F828 and the Canon Digital Rebel)

What's so special about this time of year? Trek Expo! One of my favorite things to do there is shoot lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures of the celebrities.

What's wrong with the camera I have? I have a Sony Mavica MVC-FD88. The pictures are great and I can get decent 4x6 prints off of them. The problem(s)?

• It's only 1.3 megapixels. Very low resolution by today's standards (not so when I bought it about 4 years ago).
  
• It records to floppy. Very cool for ease of use but it gives a five second recycle time. I lost count of the lost pictures.
  
• At max resolution, I can only record 3-5 pictures per disc.
  
• No image stabilization.
  

Part of the reason I haven't upgraded before was because I could see the specs changing rapidly (2MP, 2.6MP, 3MP, 4MP...) and everyone else had a short zoom. You see, one of the things I LOVE about my mavica is the incredible zoom. It has 8x optical with 2x digital for an effective 16x zoom - unheard of when I first bought it. Now, the megapixel wars seem to have leveled out and long zooms are back in fashion.

I need to cash out my birthday check ($75 - thanks mom & dad) and stash the money away as seed money. Maybe if I leave it in a candlelit room long enough, it'll reproduce.

I'll let you know how it goes.