Wagle with new Canon digital camera that displays his own image- the first photo that was taken by the camera on the day he bought it. This photo and the one displayed were taken by Suraj Kunwar on 31 and 19 October. Clicking on the image will display the its enlarged version.
19 Oct [Kathmandu]: I vividly remember that day, some four years ago in the same shop in New Road where I bought a brand new Canon Digital Camera today, I had gone to buy a digital camera. That was Canon A370 camera, two 128 MB memory cards, two pairs of rechargeable batteries and a battery charger. I paid Rs. 27,000 for all that (the camera was 3.2 Mega Pixel).
The camera I bought today the camera is 7.1 Mega Pixel (Canon A570) and the pack included a slim 2 GB memory card, a pair of rechargeable batteries and a battery charger. The LCD is bigger and has more shock resistance capacity. The total cost: Rs. 19000. I could also add the inflation in Nepali market and currency over the last three years.
This is the image of Wagle taken by the old Canon camera, as the first image, on the day it was bought (27/04/2004- 18:45:36 PM). Pic by Ujjwal Acharya Clicking on the image will display the its enlarged version.
Things-especially the digital ones- have become cheaper on the one hand and bigger in terms of capacity and performance on the other.
Okay, I must write more on my four year old Canon A 370 that was working absolutely fine until last week. Then suddenly something happened to it, the LCD shopped displaying.
I bought that camera because that I really wanted to. And I must admit I made optimum use of the small and wonderful piece of machine. That camera really took me to the digital age and helped me in so many ways. The camera was most useful, among many things, to take pictures on my blogs and for my newspaper stories. Without that camera, no photo blogs on UWB and WSJ would have been possible. Many of my blog posts and newspaper stories have been greatly supported by the photos that I took with that camera. Many a times, the camera became the object of attack by the riot police who were desperately trying to control or suppress the pro-democracy demonstrations in pre-April 2006 days and months.
The camera was so much dear to me that I rarely gave that to other people. That camera was with me everywhere. And I used to carry it always. The official motto was: “It’s here, on my waist (or in my bag) 24/7.”
In retro, I have no complains against that camera. I must thank it, from the heart of its lens, for superb service it provided to me in its youthful days. Yes, there were many instances when I was frustrated because I couldn’t click fast enough to capture fast moving thinks, especially the police beatings in the rallies, but then it wasn’t really the camera’s mistake or mine either. It was designed or manufactured the way it was and I had decided to buy in the form it was available in the shop at that point in time.
The shopkeeper who sold me the camera said that it would cost about Rs. 3000 to fix the problem. And after that, he said, the camera would fetch as much as Rs. 3000 if I wanted to sell! So I have decided not to fix it and not to sell it for the time being. It’s an object of historical importance and significance for me! It’s a piece of antique! It has seen and experienced history in Nepal. Not to mention many different places in other parts of the world. As for now I have decided to keep it in my private collection! But that’s not the final decision yet. Many be some day I will consider putting it up at eBay for auction with the minimum bid of USD 5000. (Or this amount might increase in future, I am serious.)
[This blog post was written on the date specified in the dateline and was posted on the date shown on the post date.]
Dinesh Wagle on Nepali Society 