My oldest niece has wanted a digital SLR for awhile now. Granted, she never EVER takes photos at family gatherings, not even holidays. Every once in awhile we'll see a pic of her dogs posted on her facebook page, but that's about the extent of it. She's stated several times "she's a photographer!" (and it always feels like she should add "dammit!" at the end of that statement) but we always pooh-pooh her and laugh ourselves silly. For her birthday she asked for gift cards for the big box warehouse in town where she was wanting to buy her camera, and had some other money saved. One problem--she DOESN'T HAVE A MEMBERSHIP TO THE WAREHOUSE. Since I do have one, I offered to take her--and I think if she could have she would have left in the middle of dinner yesterday and rushed to get her camera. Instead, we made plans to meet her there after they got out of church today.

It was a comedy of errors-- the one she wanted and was advertised on the website was actually about $200 more at the store. She took the box, marched to customer service and demanded to know why. She wasn't going to be getting that camera kit now-- and we all finally convinced her she didn't really need the big honking lens ("but what if I want to take pictures in the back of the church at a wedding?")--and then discovered the camera was out of stock and only the display model was available. We asked at the service desk if they could call another store about the camera, lo and behold, they had five.

Off we went-- and as it turns out, they had a different camera kit for a really good price, but it was 10 mega pixels instead of 12. That was a BIG sticking point with her. We convinced her it wasn't a deal breaker, 2 mega pixels was not going to make any difference for the kind of pictures she wanted to take. We almost had her... until she asked a man next to her who was also looking at cameras. he started to say that if he had a choice he'd go with the 12, and I caught his eye and made a stop!! cut!! motion across my neck and he said,"But actually, 2 mega pixels is nothing". So she filled out the little form for the 10 mp camera, we paid for it and lo and behold-- they were out of stock and only the display model was available. I thought she was going to cry! So we went back, got the 12 mp camera (without the kit)--exchanged them and she was good to go.

Really, though, you had to be there. It was so Amanda.














Boo hoo-- we paid, but no camera!

Yay!
No extra lens, but it's 12 mp!!!!