Overnight, we traded the sounds of the ocean for the familiar sounds of early morning song birds.  They sing the same 7 notes each morning, their own kind of Revelry.  I know I’m home when I hear them at the break of day.  I don’t know what these birds look like — only that they inhabit the trees around here and sing out their delight early every morning.

So many thoughts are swimming in my head this morning.  I should be thinking about the AVID conference I’m going to tomorrow morning in Sacramento — or the laundry I must get done this before I go.  I should be exploring the new curriculum we’ve adopted for ELA — and finishing up the pre-conference work I’ve been assigned to complete before tomorrow.  I should be thinking about the year ahead — getting ready for my eager 7th graders who’ve no doubt started to dread the end of  summer a little bit, but for whom the structure and predictability of the school year is often a good thing.  My morning is full of “shoulds.”

Instead, I’m thinking about which camera I keep and which one I give to my daughter to take to college.

Here’s the dilemma:

For the last few years, I’ve shot with a Canon G-16, a little point-n-shoot that I have loved. It allowed me to turn over my heavy Nikon DSL for something lightweight, while still maintaining a lot of functionality.  It was a present from my husband, just before an extended trip to London and Greece and, since then, I have worked that camera hard.  If you read my blog, you know that a week before we left for Hawaii, the camera stopped working.  It was broken — and I was brokenhearted.

I quickly sent it back to the manufacturer for repairs and we bought a new Panasonic DC-ZS70 to replace it, thinking that when the Canon returned, it would be perfect for my college-aged daughter to take back to “big sky” Montana.

That was the plan.

The new Panasonic is great — and has many features that the Canon does not.  But I’m not quite sold. Maybe it’s just that I’m a creature of comfort and change is hard? There are a few tiny things that the Canon seems to have that I love, but they are tiny by comparison. The Canon arrived back home yesterday and I have a month to make a decision.

Photographers:  What would be important to you and which would you choose?  Why?