Yesterday, I was watching the morning news, and John Anderson, the anchor did a consumer spending story that went over the best times of years to buy certain merchandise. According to his resources, John said that March is the best time of year to be buying digital cameras, due to something to do with Japan’s taxes. So all the digital camera manufacturers will be unloading all of last years digital camera models.

Digital Camera Deals In March

According to the Sales flyers from my Sunday Paper:

• Target -
  • Nikon S570 12 mega pixels – 149.99 – save $30
  • Nikon D3000 SLR camera  – $499.99 – save $50
  • Nikon D5000 SLR camera – $699.99 – save$50
• Staples
  • Kodak EasyShare C180 -$69.50 – save $30
  • Kodak EasyShare M341- $99.99 – save $50
  • Canon PowerShot A1100 12 mega pixels $129.99 save $20
  • Nikon Coolpix S570 -$149.99 – save $30
  • Flip Ultra camcorder $129.99 save $20
• Best Buy
  • Canon EOS Rebel TLi D-SLR Camera769.99 – save $30
  • Canon EOS 7D D-SLR Camera 1799.99 -  save $100
  • Nikon D3000DX D-SLR Camera $499.99 – save $50
  • Nikon Coolpix S70 $299.99 – save $50
  • Nikon Coolpix L20 Plus $89.99 – save $30
  • Sony Cyber-shot TXI $299.99 – save $50

This is just a small selection of the digital camera sales that I found in the Sunday sales flyers. I am sure if you do a little searching, you will be able to find greater sales online. Many times, if you stop in to the actual physical store, there will be sales that are specific to each store. Many times you can get the demo models at really huge discounts. Last year, a friend of mine got a real sweet Sony DSLR for a little over $200, just because he was at the right spot at the right time.

I am going to keep my eyes on the digital camera deals as the month goes on, and plan to update this post with any other deals that I find.

What digital camera do you have your eye on?

Since writing the post “How Do I Get Out of My T-Mobile Contract?“, we have gotten out of our contract and switched to AT&T. It has been only several days, but all of our calls have come through and we have not dropped any either. But it is still too early to for me to say if AT&T is better than T-Mobile all together.

Other than the lack of coverage, we were very satisfied with the T-mobile customer support, at least it seemed like they tried to meet all of our needs when possible.

Anyway, I have been getting myself acquainted to the iPhone(not sure I am keeping it though) and I took several pictures of one of our Russell D’Alessio’s  to compare.  The left pic was taken with my Canon S5 IS and the right pic was taken with the iPhone camera.

Notice that the wall color is white on the iPhone camera picture and the Canon displays as the actual green color. But other than that, the picture taken with the 2.0 mega pixel camera of the iPhone looks good enough for the web.

I will have to take a pic with my wife’s Blackberry to compare to the IPod.

I would like to thank the Minnesota Attorney, Aaron Hall for his comment on the T-Mobile post, which encouraged me to keep making phone calls. The right thing to say when talking to T-mobile, was to tell them I wanted out of my contract, and then they asked me why. The customer service agent then asked for my address so that he could verify on their map that they indeed did not service our area. We then had to go into a T-Mobile store with an ID that had our address on it to verify the location. Our account was put on a tentative closure for the end of the month.

The same day we canceled our T-mobile contract, we visited the AT&T Store in Pottstown, PA to get info about cost of services and available phones, but delayed signing up with their services until my wife did her due diligence. The next day after she did some research, and after we decided that I would get an IPhone and she would get another Blackberry, we stopped in and signed the family up for new cell phones.

If you have a smart phone, how do you like it? Have you had an IPhone? Got any iPhone tips for me? What are the must have iPhone apps? What iPhone photo editing apps do you use?

Prior to going on our trip to New Orleans, Lizzie got me a Canon S5 IS Digital camera, which is the camera that I had been checking out at the local stores. The Canon S5 IS is a medium sized camera, at just below a pound and maybe an inch shorter in length than Canon’s Rebel. The S5 has lots of great features that make it a solid camera that does not require the purchase of extra lenses. Throw in the 4 AA batteries and you are ready to take pictures. The camera also comes with a 32megabyte SD memory card, but I swapped out the 2gig memory card in my other camera. Note:Must remember to reformat the card.

Features I have used thus far include:

• Add sound bytes to a picture. This is great for adding reminders about pictures such as where the picture was taken, notes for future blog posts, names of people in pictures, pronunciations of words that may relate to the pictures, etc…
• Movie mode with zoom during movie. I used to hate not being able to zoom in and out while making a video.
• Various settings for night photography. I really need to sit down and work on this, because frequently Lizzie and I are out at restaurants that have “mood” lighting, and I want to take pictures of our meals.
• The color filter allows you to take black and white pictures while filtering out or in certain colors. So if I want to take a picture that highlights a red rose, I can make everything else b&W and leave the red rose red.

Well at any rate, there are lots of cool features on the S5 that should keep me busy for quite a while.

Check out the New Orleans Picture set to see the photos I took with the Canon S5 IS.

If you have an S5 or another camera that you love, let me know. What features of your camera do you love or hate?

Buy a Canon S5 IS