Serendipity is great stuff. Our neighborhood is having its annual collective garage sale. We wandered out and I immediately found a great blue and white vase I'll use for tulips across the street. We also met a neighbor, Peggy, whose relatives had driven up from Iowa with stuff for the sale!
We followed a sign that said "sale in alley" and found a table full of old cameras of every kind, none of them working, but all of them very cool-looking. As we were chatting with the seller, a professional photographer who also collects old cameras, I mentioned that I wanted to get a camera that worked for my daughter, who was gazing with enchantment at the table. Twenty minutes later, we left with a kit that includes a leather carrying case, an Olympus EVOLT e500 SLR camera with two different zooms, extra batteries and memory cards (two kinds) all the cables, lens filters, rechargers, manuals and the original box. Because I'd been looking around for something like this to give my daughter as a graduation present and because she has such a great eye when she takes pictures, much better than mine, I recognized that the price he was asking was an incredible deal, (thank you, Steve!) and after he showed us some of the controls and explained some basic concepts, I could see this would be a comfortable camera for a novice to learn with. Like a lot of pro photographers, he had upgraded to a much fancier set-up, and I know from another friend who is married to a photographer that it can often be tough to resell when you upgrade. And I was dreading going to the stores and being bombarded with specs, or trying to find out online what I should get. So he got a garage sale windfall, and we got a fabulous deal on a complete kit for my artistic child. And we met another neighbor.
Happy, happy graduation, dear! Now it's time to play and learn. There are lots of lessons online, but we also have a dear friend who is a photographer, and we will join her for a camera safari at the end of the month.
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