Trusty Nikon Coolpix 4500: RIP

Hi, folks--today I'm not going to "review" anything; instead, I'm giving you a little status update on how things are going "behind the scenes" here. It's about the camera.

It's kaput. My trusty, easy, point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix 4500 is out of commission. The zoom button doesn't work--you press it down, and nothing happens; it doesn't even spring back into place.

It is an old camera, but a very good one for a "point and shoot"; Sue started letting me use it when she got her nice digital SLR, which by now she's replaced with a newer SLR.

And it was having other problems; the sensor was getting old. I don't know if you noticed, but there were more than a few "dead pixels" creeping in there, and the pictures were having more and more "noise," especially when the lighting was dark. Sue showed me how to compensate somewhat, by bumping the resolution to its highest level.

Oh, but without the zoom, it's almost impossible to get the thing to find its focus, especially when taking closeup pictures. And closeups were one of the biggest strengths of that camera.

Especially for pictures of food!

(A sloppy joe from Kaitlyn's graduation party last summer!)

(Meringue atop one of the kuchens I've made, using Grandma's recipe.)

(Some kind of mushroom fly atop a cluster of honey mushrooms in our yard last summer.)

(When we dig in our gardens, we often discover historic marbles and stuff.)

The swivel feature is more than just a convenience that saved me from having to lie on the ground or get dirt on my chin; sometimes, you really don't want to have your face anywhere near the subject!

(Found on the Lake Erie beach at Huron, Ohio, last summer.)

(July 5, 2009, found on the sidewalk of downtown Jeff City; a cookie--I think.)

At this point, I'm mainly relying on Sue for pictures; she took all of the Jacob's Cave ones in the last post. And we're hunting on eBay to see what kind of replacement I can get inexpensively. Meanwhile--you might have to tolerate a few posts without pictures. Sorry, but that's how it goes, I guess.