“It Was Time for a New Camera”

Lauren was born Friday morning at 7:48 am. One of the nurses demolished my camera that night, when she pulled it from the top of the entertainment center in Shannon's room to the tile floor six feet below.

That was the end of my Nikon Coolpix 950, a wonderful camera that had grown a little long in the tooth. (Still, my biggest complaint about it was that it was too difficult to get pictures from it to the computer. USB had been around for a while when we bought that camera in 99. That is also the most common complaint you'll see about the 950 in old reviews reviews.)

I borrowed Eric & Bonny's Canon Rebel for the weekend. Excellent camera, which we used pretty heavily for a few days to get shots like this and this. (Shannon has some talent... she took the best shots.)

Monday we were bringing the baby home, and the Prides needed their camera back for a trip to Boston. I needed to buy a camera.

See, back in '93 and '94, I had a lot of money, wasn't married and had almost no expenses ($185/mo rent!). I splurged on camera equipment, and ended up with thousands of dollars in lenses. Then I went digital in 99 when Corinne bought the Coolpix 950 for my birthday. For the next seven or eight years I rarely touched the old camera and lenses.

With all the D-SLR's out there now, I figured I should be able to find something that would work with all of those lenses.

The lenses are all Minolta AF mount, from Tamron. Problem: Minolta stopped making D-SLR's a year ago.

I searched for clues about cameras that use the same mounting system, or adaptors that would let me use my Minolta AF lenses with another camera (preferably a Nikon D200). I knew my chances were slim to none when I started... but the surprise was that I couldn't find any useful information! There are way too many junk "digital photography" sites on the web.

The closest camera shop (with which I was familiar) was Ritz Camera, in the mall. Ugh. Already late to pick up "the family" at the hospital (but under orders from everybody to HAVE A CAMERA WHEN THE BABY COMES HOME!), I went to Ritz hoping they'd have some solution for my problem.

The only clerk in the store was also the owner. It took her 25 minutes to "get to me," but when I explained my problem she said, "Here, this is the one you want," and handed me a Sony Alpha A100.

I bought it. Body only, since I didn't need the lens.

Apparently when Minolta decided they couldn't compete in the D-SLR market with the likes of Nikon and Canon, they sold their technology to Sony. The A100 is (basically) a Minolta model that was never released... Sony just rebranded and tweaked it a little.

I'm very happy with it. :-)

(To the right are some of my favorites-so-far, which I shot with the new camera.)