My wife, son and I are going to Europe in a few weeks on a family vacation in England, Paris and Italy; our last “real” vacation was two years ago when we went to Oahu for our 10 year anniversary.
It was going to be a great trip, we stayed at the Mandarin Oriental, went “shark cage diving”, rented a yacht and a crew for a afternoon, took a helicopter tour of the island, did a afternoon at the hotel spa and more; it was really quite the trip.
The problem is that our camera and camcorder was stolen by the staff of the Mandarin Oriental (sorry I must rant!), when we arrived the bellman came to the car (we rented a convertible) and asked to take our bags, being the regular traveler I keep my valuables close and so I told him that it was alright I would carry a few of the bags (the ones with the valuables in them); he responded by saying that I was on vacation and that he would take care of it, those that know me know I am not one to “take it easy” but I was going to try on this trip so I conceded.
Well after we checked in my wife and I went to our room waiting for our bags but the cameras never showed, when I contacted the front desk they told me they would look into it and get back to me. We asked if they had a camera they could rent or let us borrow one while they tried to resolve this, their response was no but they would get this resolved quickly.
Long, long story short they never found our cameras, never apologized, accused us of lying about bringing the cameras in the first place, refused to make any concession of the cost of the stay and in the end claimed they offered to rent us a camera but we refused (which is a total lie they even refused to take a picture of us at the end of the trip so we could have a single picture to remember the trip with); it’s a real shame because absent this very, very, very bad experience I would have had a glowing review of the hotel and its restaurants.
But given how badly they handled this I have told dozens of people NOT to stay at Mandarin Oriental properties when they travel (there is a Mandarin Oriental in London, and although the hotel we are staying at is comparable in cost I will never set foot on personal business in a Mandarin Oriental facility); but back to my new SLR the net of the above experience was we have no pictures of our $8,000 trip (sans a couple disposable camera pictures that are not worth the cost of the camera) and had to spend $1000 to replace our cameras.
Well with us going to Europe in a few weeks I was not about to end up punked again, this time were bringing 3 Cameras our Canon S70 (this replaced the S50 that was stolen by the Mandarin Oriental), a Panasonic Lumix DCM-FX9 (my sons) and our new Nikon D40x. We will each carry one of these cameras and not let them leave our sights.
We are not “photographers” but do like having pictures to share with friends and family and have never had a desire or need to purchase a SLR, but if one wants to get good pictures of big things, things that are a little far away, etc. you really need a digital SLR (or so my camera nut friends tell me).
I spoke to six or so people before we purchased what we did, it was between the Nikon D40x and the Canon Rebel XTi, the interesting thing I found out there was that camera people are a bit like truck people; have you ever heard I would rather push a Chevy than drive a Ford? Well that’s basically the sort of feedback I got on Nikon vs Canon J
That’s not to say that each “cult” didn’t have good reasons for why their brand was better it’s just that they both had the same reasons…
The tie breaker ended up being this special Costco had going on the Nikon D40x, for $989 + tax you got:
a. D40x Body
b. Nikkor 18-55mm lens
c. Nikkor 55-200mm lens
d. 1GB SD
e. Digital SLR’s for dummy’s DVD video
f. Camera Case
The lenses don’t have the Vibration Reduction feature (which I totally wish they did) but at that price the kit comes in atleast $150 cheaper than a comparable bundle for the Canon Rebel XTi or Nikon D40x based on the best prices from http://froogle.com, plus if we don’t like it or it has any weird problems we can just take it back to Costco (got to love em’).
I have not used it yet but Heather took last Friday off and took Andrew to the zoo and took some simply amazing pictures with the camera, I am sure we will be happy now if we can just figure out all the stuff we can do with it.