I have become death, destroyer of cameras?
The best took the A60 yesterday, leaving me with nothing but the emergency camera. While at the beach, it decided that it would join its bigger brother in the grave; by the time it came back to Portland, it had developed beautiful plumage and had to be nailed to its perch so it wouldn't get away.
So all we've got left in the electronic camera department is a slug. And a healthy dislike for Canon all-in-one cameras. I've been drooling over the cheaper Canon digital SLRs, but I would be fairly unhappy if I spent US$800 on a camera that only lasted a year before the magic smoke disappeared.
And, no, I don't think that a film camera would be a particularly good solution; when I was a teenager, I played around with developing my own pictures, and I remember it taking a lot of time for me to build up a large collection of blurry over and underexposed pictures of Milwaukee Road Alco and F-M switchers.
I guess it's time to start looking at various camera magazines and figuring how much money it would be worth to have a camera that's not quite so all-singing all-dancing as the all-in-one cameras are, but which would not cost me the downpayment on a house in a free country.