The Rebel I Wanted

I know you've enjoyed seeing the amazing photos I can take with our old Canon Powershot SD400.

(Yeah, the point-and-shoot with the cracked display screen so that I have to use the inaccurate viewfinder and it's always a guessing game on how many times to press the flash button to turn the flash off or to adjust any other settings...)

So, in light of that, I've been looking into buying a new camera for a while now. Around Christmas last year, anytime I went to Costco I'd get distracted at the cameras, which would sometimes cause my shopping trips to take twice as long as usual. The only problem was that I wasn't looking at the basic cameras. I was always eyeing the DSLRs.

I've been doing research on and off for the past couple of years on them and narrowed down what I want my first DSLR to be. A Canon Rebel was my first choice (as seen at the bottom of my wishlist). But I've kept my mind open in case there was something that would be better suited for me.

And then my old friend Katrina decided to sell her Canon Rebel XS with all of its bells and whistles for $400 and I couldn't get it out of my head.

Bob and I have decided to call this the "red surfboard" problem.

See, back in November when I was deciding what to get Bob for his birthday, I went with getting him an Xbox. And then I found a wicked-good deal on a 50 inch plasma flat screen, so I got that for him too. While I was in the process of buying these (which he didn't know about), he found a really nice surfboard that his friend was selling. It retailed over $1200 new, and his buddy was only asking $400 for it. I had already gotten him those extravagant presents, and it was a couple of days before his birthday and a month before Christmas. He was going to just go ahead and buy it, which was frustrating to me because you don't buy yourself new things of that caliber right before those special occasions. I wanted to wait and get the surfboard for him for Christmas. I wanted it to be a surprise, but he wasn't having it. He kept on trying to figure out a way to pay his friend in installments, or have him hang onto it until we could pay for it later, etc. So I worked our budget over and somehow came up with $400 (I really can't remember where it came from) and handed it to him so he could go buy it. Not only was Bob getting a gaming system and huge tv for his birthday, he was now getting a surfboard as well. It really irritated me because I still had to figure out what to get him for Christmas.

My birthday is April 4th. That's just a couple of months from now. But I might be having a baby that day. Bob's been bothering me and trying to figure out what to get me for Valentines Day as well as my birthday. Chocolate and flowers might actually be nice this year for both occasions. Plus we should really be trying to save money for this kid...

Then Katrina had to be selling her DSLR.

I know she's taken care of it. It's going to be practically brand new. I told her I wanted it. I basically already bought it yesterday. Then I realized that I should talk to Bob about it. So I did, and I think he knew he didn't have too much of a choice in the matter. While we were talking Bob paused and said, "I think we have a red surfboard problem here." I laughed. It's a really similar situation. I think Bob really wishes he'd found the deal and could surprise me with the camera. He even told me later that he'd wanted to contact Katrina and have her convince me she sold it to someone else first and then he could get it and surprise me with it on Valentines Day  as a gift for that day plus an early birthday present. But he's been miserably sick for the past 3 days and didn't have the energy to work it all out. So he just told me to go ahead and get it.

(Here goes working over our budget again...)

I'm getting the exact DSLR camera that I wanted to start out with!
And I'm super excited about it.

Expect better pictures and more posts in the near future!