The digital camera that saved my marriage

About 5 years ago my wife and I decided to buy our first digital camera. If I remember correctly the camera was a birthday present for my wife. Whenever I buy a new gadget, I want to get the most bang for my buck. So I spent some time researching different cameras and ended up getting a Minolta Dimage Z1. I believe we spent between $200 to $300 on it. This model is in between a point and shoot and a SLR. The camera has 10x optical zoom and 3.2 mega pixels, which was a lot at the time. We thought this camera was great at first. I think we overlooked the issues with this camera just because it was digital. The more we used this camera the more we hated it. Approximately a third of our pictures would not turn out. When we would preview images on the 1.5 inch screen they would look fine. We would then transfer the pictures to the computer only to find out that the image was blurry. The other thing we hated about this camera was how bulky it is. The bulkiness would cause us to not want to take it places. Every time my wife would use the camera, I would hear about how bad it was. The scene is reminiscent of early "John and Kate Plus Eight" episodes where Kate is yelling "I hate this camera!" From what I could tell, it looks like they may have the same camera. Thus this electronic device was starting to be a tension point in our marriage. Every time we would use it, we would talk about buying a new one.

So, this Christmas, I once again began researching digital cameras. Not having much money to spend on new gadgets, I limited my search to cameras under $150. I narrowed my search down to four different cameras and went to Best Buy one evening to try them out (this was the same night I lost my blue tooth headset). That night I walked out with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3. I picked this amazing camera for $109. I actually ended up spending about $60 after some BB rewards and a much appreciated $50 gift card from the in-laws. This camera is incredible. My wife and I find ourselves taking pictures all the time now. The camera is easy to use, super compact, and takes great pictures. It also has some unique preset scene modes like food, baby, and pet. It makes you want to take a picture of your food just to see what the mode will do! At last things are good once again on the home front when it comes to taking pictures.

As a side note it also makes a decent video camera. This past week I went with my wife to her ultrasound appt. to find out our baby's gender. The previous night she had asked me to grab a DVD to record the ultrasound on. I forgot. We realized this while sitting in the doctor's office waiting room. I had to come up with something, she still hasn't forgiven me for accidental taping over our son's ultrasound. I remembered this camera had a video mode, so I decided to try it. The video turned out really good, especially considering we were in a pitch black room with only a computer screen on. By the way we're having a girl.