Can't Stop the Tide From Flowin'

I’ve been fighting an increasingly lonely rear-guard action against digital photography for about a decade now. Until the last few years, there has not been much wrong with a strategy of Waiting Until the Bugs Are Out Of It: each successive year has seen better resolutions, shorter lag times, AND lower prices. By now, even I can’t argue that digital photography hasn’t Arrived. Still -- having never even bothered to make the jump to autofocus -- I’ve had little motivation to jump in at the deep end of digital photography. (Quite the reverse, in fact: as everybody dumps their film cameras on eBay, film gear has never been cheaper.)

This weekend, The Teenager discovered the little Olympus digicam that I picked up on a clearance table last summer. And I think I’ve lost her to The Dark Side.

Last summer, I had given her a little Nikon EM to get her started with Serious Photography. (This is just about how I started, thirty years ago: when somebody gives you an SLR, you’ve been placed under a geas to at least learn how to use it.) I can’t exactly say that she has caught fire with the hobby. But this weekend she decided to help her mom start selling stuff on eBay - which pretty much necessitates putting up digital photos.

So, all on her own, she got the little Oly out, installed it on the kids’ iBook, and started snapping away with it. Pouring photos into iPhoto followed immediately.

Now what am I going to do with all this film?