I bought a new camera on January 2nd… it’s a Samsung WB600 and basically cost me a months worth of food. It does all kinds of crazy shit my Kodak C533 never could. It’s basically a hybrid between a real camera and a digital, in that I now have full control over the aperture settings, shutter speed and a few other things. It also has a 15x zoom, compared with a 3x zoom on the C533.

The lens is also way better, 24mm compared to 37mm, and there’s a really cool macro feature. And the camcorder component has quality options, including a high end high-def option.

The suckiest part is the flash placement — the flash is exactly where my fingers should normally rest, so using the flash is awkward and weird. There are also about two hundred more options to work through, with the C533 there were about four options — wide angle; landscape; seven exposure settings — and the photos were kind of the same quality.

I changed camera’s mostly because my hands were shaking worse than ever over the past few months, so all of my shots were blurred. So the Samsung has a few different anti-shaking options.

Honestly, for the first two weeks, I was ready to throw this thing through a wall. But once I found the 129-page guide things started getting better.