Comics I Bought This Week: February 6, 2010

Feb06
on February 6, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comic plus a hard cover collection:

  • Echo – 19

  • Buffy Season 8 – 32

  • Savage Dragon – 157

  • “The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century” by Dash Shaw

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

  • “The Stuff of Dreams” Issues 1-3 by Kim Deitch

    • I think this is the first thing by Deitch I’ve ever purchased despite the fact that he’s been making comics since the 1960’s. I’m not sure how I managed not to read his work. I bought this series as it was released. One issue a year from 2003 to 2005. This is the first time I’ve read it all together.

    I’m a sucker for stories that are about finding things. Not quests for lost swords and such but stories about people looking for old books, maps, drawings, or whatever. Stories that involve history and the history of obscure and forgotten people and things. The idea that so much of even the recent past is forgotten fascinates me.

    This story purports to be real since it is an autobiographical account of Deitch searching flea markets and Ebay for an old stuffed animal from the 1910’s but then it takes a turn or two into the fantastic. Each issue deals with a different search that starts with the stuffed animal in the first moves to a forgotten actor in the second and finally to a now abandoned town for little people in the third. All the searches are interconnected by a mysterious mythical stuffed animal like cat creature.

    I enjoyed the story though I found it dry at times.That’s probably because there was a thirteen page sequence at the end of issue two that was told as illustrated text rather than comics and repeated a lot of what we were already told at the beginning of the issue. That may be the only part I really found dry.

    Deitch’s artwork is, of course, reminiscent of 1960’s underground comics because that’s where he come out of. I like his relentless storytelling as he tells us about all the forgotten things he’s learned in his investigation into events that happened in and around a New Jersey town back in 1915 when a movie serial and comic strip tie in were creating (or reflecting) a scandal. It also has some fantastic, unbelievable things happening on a south seas island in about the same time period. It’s a wide ranging story.

    So what if a 60’s underground cartoonist was still around making comics in the 2000’s about the far out tales that a search into the forgotten past can reveal? Track down “The Stuff of Dreams” and find out. It has a collected volume.

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    Laptop Down!

    Jan31
    on January 31, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Blog


    I am trying something new. Writing on my iPod touch. My laptop is my usual choice for writing but, unfortunately, that has died on me. Bad video RAM is the culprit. Now I’m stuck without my usual writing tool of choice.

    My desktop computer is not set up for writing. I have it at standing height and the keyboard is too high to comfotably type at. Sure I do it but it is far from ideal. Great for making art but bad for making literature. As a matter of fact I only started writing regularly once I bought my laptop.That was back in the beginning of 2005 and I’ve been writing steadily ever since. Before that I wrote sporadically. Whenever I needed to, say for an e-mail or comic book script, I could write but I never wrote on impulse. Nor was it a regular habit. The laptop made writing much less of a physical chore and therfore much easier. I have to say it has been a great success in terms of my creativity.

    So now I’m stuck with a bit of a problem. What do I do about writing? It’s not my livelyhood like computer graphics are. If my desktop went down I would immediatly have to get a new one no matter the cost. But my laptop was mainly for writing, which nets me no profit, or surfing the web (also no profits). I just bought a new car last October and I will be paying that off for years to come so my budget is stretched as it is. That’s life.

    I was planning on buying a new laptop next year but that doesn’t help me now. Now my choices are: send mine out to have it fixed which is a minimum $400, buy the part and try to fix it myself which is a $300 minimun, scour Ebay for the same model used which looks to be about a $250 minimum, get a brand new one for $1500, or go without until next year. That’s why I’m writing this on the iPod touch. I’m trying the “Go without” route. It’s a little tough.

    Since I work on a Apple computer another choice would be to make a cheap “Hackintosh” laptop. That is where I would get a cheap $300-$500 Windows laptop and put Apple’s OS X on it myself. That sounds like an interesting idea but as I looked into it I saw one problem. Most of the cheap netbook laptops are about the same or even less powerful than my five year old Powerbook. That came as a bit of a surprise to me.

    Besides the fact that no one likes to have to make a surprise large purchase there is an extra pain in the neck element to my laptop woes. This year, come springtime, I was already planning on buying a new camera. Not a “Must have” purchase but one I was planning on. Now I have to figure out if it would be better to get a new laptop first. It’s a tough call.

    Before I buy something pricey I like to ask myself my standard question, “What can I do with this that I couldn’t do before?”. With the laptop I can’t really do anything new but it will restore the status quo. Not very exciting but I liked the status quo.

    With the camera I hoped to be able to take better street photos. I’ve always been a fan of taking street photos but have finally figured out how to make something out of them. I want to explore the ideas I have a little further and a new camera (the one I shoot with now is from 2005) would help me do that. But reality is that I only get to shoot street photos down in Manhattan six or so times a year. Not really a mainline of mine though I do take snap shots far more often than that. And I do work on the street photos after I take them. I may only shoot them six times a year but I work on them more often than that.

    Another thing that I never noticed before about my laptop is that it gives me a reason to sit down. Since I generally find it more comfortable to work standing up I rarely sit and work. Having a laptop to sit and write or surf the web on gave me a reason to sit down. And I do need to sit and rest every now and again. Today when I sat to rest I had nothing to do! That makes me sit less and I’ve been more tired at the end of the day. Habits are a strange thing.

    This tiny screen on the iPod isn’t helping much. It’s fairly easy using the on screen keys but it’s harder seeing what I’ve already typed. Plus it’s hard to organize my thoughts since I’m only able to see the last three lines without scrolling. I don’t know how long I can keep up writing on this thing. I’ll have to edit this on my desktop anyway. Anyway, I think I’m leaning towards getting a used laptop on Ebay. Same model as my old one that way I’ll have parts in case it breaks.

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    Comics I Bought This Week: January 30, 2010

    Jan30
    on January 30, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

    I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:

  • Walking Dead – 69

  • The Troublemakers by Gilbert Hernandez

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

  • “Guardians of the Galaxy: Legacy” by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pellstier, and Rick Magyar

    • This is another one of Marvel’s “Cosmic” comics like “Nova”. It takes place in outer space and the team of heroes takes on threats to whole planets and space civilizations. It has more in common with “Buck Rogers” than “Spider-Man”.

    It’s generally a good comic. The writing is asolid and though the art is, at times, a little too busy for me it mostly works well. I don’t have much of a problem with the execution of the comic. The problem I have is with the whole concept of using familiar reoccurring characters.

    I’ve always said that using familiar characters is a double edged sword. It’s good financially. People will buy Spider-Man because they are familiar with him and have liked him in the past. The bad part is that you can’t stray far from old Spider-Man stories because people expect the character they know and like. Spidey can’t suddenly be a millionaire playboy who can fly and shoot rays from his eyes.

    The problem I have with the Guardians is that they are made up of characters who were once familiar to me but have long strayed from the characters I used to know. They have the same names but different powers, personalities, and costumes. What is the point of unfamiliar familiar characters?

    Sure you can say that I haven’t kept up with the changes since I missed so many revamps but how many people have? These are not big name characters. There is no creative reason to use them. Just corporate culture reasons.

    It’s not a fatal flaw in the storytelling or anything like that. I just think the book comes down on the wrong side of the double edged sword that is company owned continuing characters. If they were all new characters I might be intrigued by them and want to learn more about them but instead I’m confused because at times they’re familiar and at times not. It’s tough to keep straight. I think I know them but I don’t.

    It’s like a movie sequel where the sequel strays so far from the original’s premise that one wonders why it’s even a sequel at all? The answer is, of course, marketing. That’s how I felt about this book. Regardless of its quality, which was alright, it was only named “Guardians of the Galaxy” staring Warlock, Starlord, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Quasar, and Draz the Destroyer for corporate reasons rather than creative ones. I had a hard time getting past this.

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    Insert Bad “Riddle of the Sphinx” Pun Here

    Jan24
    on January 24, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Blog


    I’m watching a recent episode of NOVA right now. I’m actually interrupting my watching to write this. It’s about the statue in Egypt known as the Sphinx. We all know it. It’s the statue of a lion with a Pharaoh’s head that sits near the great pyramids of Egypt. The big Sphinx.

    I’ve seen quite a few Sphinx TV shows but I’ve never read a book about it. Almost all my Sphinx knowledge comes from these TV shows. Though I must have read some magazine articles on the Sphinx being that I’ve subscribed to “Archeology” magazine for a long time.

    The Sphinx has had many TV shows dedicated to it because some people seem to think it was built way before the pyramids. That’s not the generally accepted view but it’s prevalent enough to capture the interest of TV producers. They love wild speculation. It makes for good TV if not good archeology.

    I’m a fan of history in general and though I’m conservative about what we actually know relating to what people said and did way back in the mist of time I love the idea of ancient lost civilizations. People doing wild, far out, and interesting things way back when and now we don’t know a thing about them. It’s a fun notion. It sets the imagination free.

    I may not believe these far out ideas about the Sphinx but I’m willing to entertain them. After all, I’m not a historian or an archeologist so my reputation will take no hit from pondering wild ideas. Ancient intelligent gorillas made the Sphinx? I’ll give it a listen. I dig a good story.

    This NOVA special is one of the conservative ones about the Sphinx. They don’t care about the wild ideas and are sticking with the mainstream historical ideas. The only problem with that is there is not a lot that is known about the Sphinx. It makes for a pretty boring tale. They seem to know a lot more about the pyramids. The Sphinx has mostly blank pages in its history book.

    I’ve always had one problem with the Sphinx that I’ve never seen addressed in any of these TV shows. My problem with the Sphinx is this: It’s an awful, awful sculpture. All of the other monumental art or building I’ve seen from ancient Egypt (in pictures since I’ve never been there) has been “A” level work. The Sphinx is “C” level work at best.

    I’ve seen other small Sphinxes from Egypt not based on the big one that actually look good. Nicely designed and well proportioned. I’ve also seen other small Sphinxes that were clearly base on the big one that look as ugly as the big one. The nicer looking small Sphinxes are rarely, and usually quickly, shown on these shows for some reason.

    Sure the Sphinx has been degraded by time but even the recreations I’ve seen of it reveal a terrible sculpture. Only the head is actually well done. The head has the usual Egyptian quality of art but the shapes and proportions of the lions body are bizarre and ugly. I’ve heard it mentioned on a couple of shows the the head is too small, which is true, but it’s more than that. It’s bad overall sculpture and that doesn’t fit with the rest of the ancient monuments over there. I mean it’s ugly in a way nothing else I’ve seen in ancient Egypt is. Maybe the TV shows are hiding the other ugly stuff but that sounds a little far fetched to me.

    I have no idea why the Sphinx would be of lesser quality than the rest. I don’t know if it’s way older than the mainstream Egyptologists say it is or that it’s just weathered beyond the abilities of computer animators to reconstruct it as it once really was but it I can tell you that it doesn’t look right to me. It looks like a local high school kid’s work got left in Da Vinci’s studio and now gets displayed beside it. With an artist’s eye I can see it doesn’t fit but that doesn’t mean anything to historians who have completely different vision.

    So there you go. I don’t have any answers for you just my observation. That’s an ugly statue. I don’t know if there is anything more to the Sphinx then we already know but give it a look yourself. You tell me if you think that’s “A” level work.

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    Comics I bought This week: January 23, 2010

    Jan23
    on January 23, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

    I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got four new comic, a trade paperback, plus a hard cover collection:

  • Rasl – 6 (I never got issues 3-5 I’ll have to track them down)

  • Starman – 81 (Since I’ve been buying the Omnibuses)

  • Glamourpuss – 11

  • Supernatural: Beginning’s End – 1

  • Young Liars Volume 3 “Rock Life”

  • The Barry Windsor-Smith Archives Conan Volume 1

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

  • “Sweatshop” 1-6 by Peter Bagge and various artists

    • This series came out back in mid 2003. It’s hard to believe that is almost seven years ago. I remember when I was reading it as it came out I thought the first issues were a little weak but it got better over time. I thought I’d give it a read to see how it holds up these many years later. Seriously, 2003 was that long ago? I’m getting old.

    I was pleasantly surprised by how good this book was. I thought it was good from issue one this time around. The main concept is this: the stories take place in the office of a successful comic strip cartoonist. He’s an old fashioned conservative guy who makes an boring old cartoon that’s an institution. Except he really doesn’t do much all day because his current crop of four young assistants do most of the work. And his sister is the office manager. Comedy ensues.

    The first few issues deal mostly with the running of the shop and the comedy is supplied by the interplay of the characters as they get things done. This was the part that I thought wasn’t as good the first time around. I liked it better all these years later. It still seems like it should be set in the 1970’s to me. I don’t know how many cartoonist shops like these are around anymore.

    The last few issues deal less with the job of cartooning and more with the personalities of the people around the office. They’re all weirdo cartoon nerds so there is lots of comedy to be mined. Funny stories are to be found here.

    Some of the art is by Petter Bagge (who supplies all of the writing) with the rest being by Stephen Destefano, Bill Wray, S. Gladden, J. Ryan, and Fields. I don’t know why some of those guys don’t have first names but their art is good. It’s all drawn in a Peter Bagge style but each artist brings his own sensibility to it. It’s well drawn all around.

    Funny, well drawn, and interesting. It’s a shame “Sweatshop” didn’t stick around longer. Here’s to you 2003!

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    Temporary Distortion Field

    Jan17
    on January 17, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Blog


    To distort or not to distort. That is the question. Or maybe the question is, “What is distortion?”. I ask this because I was working on a photo this week. It’s one of my Manhattan street scenes. A Bryant park scene specifically. It’s a photo that I took last year during one of my photo expeditions to the city.

    When I make a photo it’s not about a single image. It’s about taking a whole bunch of images, cutting them up, arranging them how I like, and pasting them down so that they work together as one final image. I used to do this with photos printed from negatives but now I do it with digital photos on the computer and then print them out and paste them down physically.

    I don’t really sweat the photos too much as I’m taking them. Sure I want to take a good picture but they’re street photos. By nature that makes them fleeting. Chance shots of chance people who happen to be walking down the street. Besides being patient and looking for good spots and subjects nothing is arranged ahead of time. It’s “Take what you can get” rather than “Bend the world to your will” photography.

    I like doing that sort of photography because it suits the spontaneity I’m looking for. It’s spontaneity in myself rather than the photos though. I spend so much time planning my drawings, paintings, comics, and prints that, years ago, I decided not to spend so much time planning my photography. I would take what I could get and see what I could do with it. And that is where my skill lies today. Not in taking the photos but in making something out of them.

    So there I was working on “Subject Unknown No. 2”. The second in my series of masked street people. The people are not actually wearing masks out on the street but I am drawing masks and pasting the masks onto the people in the digital photos. I’m doing this because I like the anonymity of strangers on the street and this makes them anonymous to everyone. Plus I like drawing masks.

    When making these photos I usually paste all the pieces down in some sort of grid pattern. Though I have, on occasion, cut on the diagonal I almost always keep the various pieces of photos rectangular. So there are straight white “Gutters” between most of the pieces of photos. As a consequence any line in a photo that is not straight is obvious.

    Photographic lenses are curved and buildings are straight. This leads to distortion in photographs. If you take a picture of a building the straight lines can look curved. As I was working on this photo and things were starting to come together I noticed that there was a building in the background of the main picture. The building’s windows made a grid. Except it was a grid that was out of square with the edges of the photo. The people in the photo looked fine but not that grid.

    Since I was working in Photoshop I decided to try and straighten that grid out. The task was to fix the grid without making the rest of the photo look distorted. It was then I had to ask myself how much distortion was too much distortion. Or was I not distorting it at all but fixing it. They only “reality” I had was the un-retouched photo that was clearly already distorted otherwise I wouldn’t have to fix that building. I had to decide where reality lay based on how it looked to me.That’s always a little weird.

    Anyway I approached the problem a couple of different ways and ended up finding a solution that suited me. The photo was of four people walking and after I finished “Fixing” it the person farthest left was leaning slightly differently than in the un-retouched version. You couldn’t tell without seeing both versions side by side and I ended up liking the new lean better than the old but now I have no idea which one is “Real”.

    So that’s where I ended up; wondering what distortion is when it comes to a photograph. Was I making the photo more like life or less so? I’m not sure but I found it a fun question to ponder. One of these weeks I’m going to start posting some of my photos and paintings here so you can see them for yourself. Yeah, I’m a little slow.

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    Comics I Bought This Week: January 16, 2010

    Jan16
    on January 16, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

    I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got four new comics:

  • Echo -18

  • Buffy Season 8 – 31

  • Grimjack: The Manx Cat – 6

  • Ed Hannigan: Covered – 1

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

  • “The Incredible Hercules – Dark Reign” by Fred van Lente, Greg Pak, and a bunch of different artists

    • Here we go with another Hercules volume. I’ve been buying these volumes as they’ve been coming out so you know I’ve been enjoying them and this one is no exception.

    The plotting on “Dark Reign” is a bit of a mess because of a company wide crossover at Marvel and a tie in with the events of an “Ares” mini series which I never read. Yet somehow it still managed to be, maybe, my favorite of the current “Hercules” volumes.

    The first part of the story is where I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Olympians were plotting against other Olympians in NYC and then Norman Osborn showed up to plot against all Olympians. Finally Osborn and the some part of the Avengers showed up and everybody fought until they stopped fighting. It was not badly don’t I just don’t know why it was done.

    After that we get Hercules traveling to Hades, the underworld, trying to save his father Zeus. I really like the way the creators make the ancient Greek gods come alive in this series. The Greek gods have been in the Marvel Universe for years but really just as another group of super heros. Now they are more like their legendary selves with crazy feuds that go back thousands of years. Fun stuff.

    The artwork by various pencilers, inkers, colorists, and letterers is alright. Not “A” level stuff but solid super hero artwork. I can’t say any of it stood out as better than the rest but nothing stood out as worse either. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

    Not much more to say about “Hercules”. It’s been a good run for the Prince of Power. An entertaining super hero comic.

    3 Comments

    Going Big

    Jan10
    on January 10, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Blog


    So what did I do this week? Well, amongst other things I drew big. I completed the first of the big drawings that I started a few weeks ago. It’s not a particularly good drawing but I got it done. That counts for something.

    I mentioned a little while ago that I felt like making some larger scale drawings and so got a large drawing board. I grabbed some of my 22×30 inch paper and taped it to the board as it sat on my easel. Then came the hard part. What was I going to draw and how was I going to draw it?

    Most drawings I do start out small even if they don’t end up that way. It’s generally easier to figure out things at a small size and then blow up the drawing. But spontaneous drawing at a large size can be interesting too. Except if you want to do large size drawing it’s best to use a large size tool. Like charcoal. And I didn’t want to use charcoal.

    This lead me to some abortive first attempts. Spontaneous pencil drawing on a large scale is not my strong suit. It showed. I had nothing but some uninteresting scribbles on paper. Things sat around that way for a while. In an effort to get something done I decided to start with a small drawing. So I did. I kept it simple and only worked it out part way. Then I drew it big and ran into trouble again with the parts that weren’t worked out. Of course I eventually had to go back to the small drawing and work it out all the way.

    Then I ran into another problem. It turns out I’m not really interested in finishing a drawing in pencil. In “finishing” I mean making a total and complete piece of art out of something. I find pencil a fairly boring medium and usually pencil drawings are a step for me to get to a finished piece. Some artists can make a finished piece in pencil but not me. Not up my alley. So the drawing sat there for another little while.

    Finally after sitting on my easel for too long I decided to take a brush to the drawing. Being that one of the artistic traditions I come out of is cartooning I’m used to finishing drawings in ink. I like the stark black and white contrast of ink. Plus I can scale up my ink tools by grabbing a big brush.

    It was a little strange drawing with an ink brush on an easel. Usually that’s something I do on a flat drawing table. But I paint with brushes on an easel so it wasn’t that strange. Still it took me some time to get the hang of it. I even tried using some white paint in a way that, years ago, I saw someone use back when I was in art school. I was less successful than she was at the method.

    I eventually ruined the drawing because I was trying so many different things with it. That was okay though. I was sure I wouldn’t get this large drawing thing right on the first try. That’s why I kept the drawing simple. It would have taken much more time to inevitably fail with a more complicated drawing.

    So after weeks of working on this drawing (in real time not actual work time which was only hours) I trashed it and started over. It only took me a day to finish after I knew what I was doing. And finish it I did. It’s not great. It makes no profound statement about anything. But I’m glad I finished it. Sometimes it’s just good to get something done. And I think I might make some big charcoal drawings too.

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    Comics I Bought This Week: January 9, 2010

    Jan09
    on January 9, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

    I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:

  • Savage Dragon – 156

  • The Invincible Ironman: World’s Most Wanted Book 2

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

  • “Incognito” by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

    • I like Brubaker and Phillips’ work. I’ve been buying it since they did “Point Blank” for Wildstorm years ago. I even bought Brubaker’s autobiographical comics back in the early Nineties when he was and alternative cartoonist. So it was a forgone conclusion that I would by the collection of their latest series.

    “Incognito” is the story of a super villain who, a few years ago, entered the witness protection plan. He is now a file clerk in a small midwestern city living an everyday life. Of course that all comes crashing down around him otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a story. Well, Harvey Pekar could get a story or two out of that.

    I’ve bought and enjoyed Brubaker and Phillips’ last four collections of their previous comic “Criminal”. The books left me I little cold though. They were well done but I had a hard time empathizing with characters who were all irredeemably bad. I didn’t have that problem with “Incognito”.

    Though the lead character is an ex-super villain and not the greatest guy in the world he was at least likable. You can feel for him as he is caught between a rock and a hard place when he becomes a pawn and then gets caught in between the law and the law breakers.

    The story takes place in it’s own super hero (or science hero) universe and a good job is done filling this universe with it’s own cast of characters. From the text piece at the end I know a few of the character were based on old, forgotten pulp heroes but, thankfully, we were spared the usual thinly veiled versions of Superman, Batman, and the rest of the JLA that have been plaguing the “alternate” super hero universes for the past decade or so.

    Sean Phillips art is as nice as ever. He can draw and tell a story in a nice “Film Noir” style. The coloring is nice too. I like the look all around as I usually do.

    Even though I always buy Brubaker and Phillips’ stuff I have to say that this book was especially enjoyable. A good read. Go pick it up.

    1 Comment

    Ni-Gone

    Jan03
    on January 3, 2010 at 6:00 am
    Posted In: Blog


    I’d like to announce that I’m officially abandoning Nikon cameras. Done. I wont be buying another Nikon. “Why is that?”, you may ask. Well let me tell you why. I just inventoried all the digital Nikon equipment that I have bought over the years and each generation of equipment is incompatible with the generation before it. Sure I knew that when I bought it but looking back over it all makes me a little annoyed because much of it didn’t have to be that way. I feel taken advantage of.

    I was into digital photography fairly early. In 1999 I bought my first digital camera (not counting the Gameboy camera). It was a 2.1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 950. I think it cost me about a thousand dollars. That is a considerable amount of money for a camera. Especially one that is considered useless just ten years later.

    I don’t regret getting into digital photography early. I’ve enjoyed it a lot and like being a pioneer when it comes to using new tools and equipment to make art. What is annoying me now is how Nikon treated the pioneers such as myself. We weren’t the professionals who mostly waited on the sidelines until Nikon came out with cameras that could use their already purchased and expensive lenses, We were the so called “Pro-sumers” who liked professional and or cutting edge equipment but didn’t make our livings using them.

    After I bought that first digital camera I bought add ons for it too. I wanted and external flash but the Coolpix 950 had no hot shoe mount. Instead I spent about hundred dollars on a special Nikon flash bracket that had a hot shoe on it and attached to the camera via a special cable. Plus I bought a Nikon Speedlight flash unit. At least that could be used with other model cameras.

    The next camera I bought was in 2002, It was the Nikon Coolpix 5000. I spent about nine hundred dollars for that one. It was a 5 megapixel camera and it had a hot shoe so it didn’t need the bracket for the external flash. The following year I dropped another two hundred dollars on a teleconverter lens and adaptor for it.

    In 2005 I bought an eight megapixel Nikon Coolpix 8800. Once again I dropped about nine hundred dollars on it. It has a hot shoe and I can still use the same flash but the teleconverter lens and the flash bracket are useless. It really doesn’t need the lens since it has a much bigger built in lens than the 5000 but it would be nice to have the option. It’s the bracket I’ve really wanted to use though. It would be nice to get my flash a little off camera and change my lighting but the 8800 lacks the special cable plug that the earlier 950 had. Why? I don’t know.

    What’s been consistent with these Coolpix cameras has been the swivel LCD. That is a feature I don’t want to do without and which not a lot of cameras have. When I was checking out the latest “Pro-sumer” Coolpix model I was disappointed to find that they’ve nearly abandoned the swivel LCD. It still moves up and down but not side to side. Plus they’ve taken the hot shoe off again. Over all the pro-sumer Coolpix models are a thing of the past and now they are consumer models. The cheaper SLR models are the new pro-sumer ones and I’m not interested in them. No swivel LCD. At least they have a live view LCD now.

    So in looking back over my equipment as I look for a new camera to possibly buy I came to the conclusion that Nikon made me abandon a lot of old equipment. That is, to an extent, understandable. It was the beginning of the digital age of photography. But now I look and see that they have also abandoned me. Digital has caught up and they’re back to selling to their pro buyers. Once again understandable. But I’ve never been a huge fan of their pro line. And I refuse to ever look through a viewfinder again. I like shooting from the hip. So I’m out. I’ll be looking for something that better suits me.

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