Goodbye Dubu?

My Canon 500D Dubu has been with me since March of 2010 (when I skipped the last week of school for a week of fun in Singapore). 500D's are the first of the DSLR's with 1080p HD video recording. I've been recording my prods with a Sony mini-dv handycam and it was a pain and the quality was a headache, but back then there were only a handful of students with nice video cameras.

Hi Donghae!

A few weeks after bringing her home, I took Dubu to the Super Show 2 press conference here in Manila. It was heaven! I was relentlessly taking pictures of Super Junior (mostly with flash!) and it was perfectly legal. But the concert was a different story. Cameras in general were not allowed but with all the people, how can they even stop us? I was able to smuggle Dubu inside but I was nervous the entire time. It did not help that my Chinese seatmates had a luggage (A LUGGAGE! WITH WHEELS!) with super long lens which can be seen from the farthest seat in the venue. They got reprimanded a few times but they pretended not to understand what the guards were saying.

Two years and a couple of trips later, Dubu is still good as new, expect for the broken SD card slot spring which doesn't affect anything anyway. She is my favorite possession, apart from this trusty white Toshiba laptop I have yet to name.

Dubu and I high above (and freezing), Daegu City

Dubu has seen a lot of pretty beaches too!

But I think I will give Dubu a new home, in South America, to be more precise. My sister's thinking of buying a camera and I've always been urging her to buy a Canon  550D or 600D in hopes of persuading her to switch cameras with me, but it's just now that I realized that maybe I don't need a DSLR. I'm not good at taking pictures to start with, and taking pictures with a DSLR comes with expectations. How shameful is it to take a terrible photo with such an expensive camera? Besides, I'm tired of being the photographer for family events, gatherings, etc. I'm too vain for that.

But I still like taking images though, especially during travels. Just to capture the entire vicinity, just for keeps. To have something to look back at when I'm once again confined in our house. I'm sure a digicam can do that. And everytime, I would have to wrap Dubu in a beanie and stow her in a large shoulder bag while I complain about the weight. My sister does more travelling and definitely takes better pictures (but maybe I'd have to teach her Photography basics). And she can afford a camera bag!

The downside of losing Dubu would have to be...looking less legit than I already am. It's not like I can get a photography job with a digicam, but come to think of it, I don't really want a photography job! So enough with my pretensions.

So much feelings for a camera. But I guess a camera is more than just an apparatus once you get attached to it. Dubu is more like my photographic memory, the closest I can get to a time machine, and well, a travel companion.