It's better to regret something you did, than something you didn't do

How could you not respond to advertising like this?After the horrendous experience with the Nikon EM, I came to the only conclusion my young and stupid brain was capable of. 'It wasn't me, my purchasing decisions weren't the issue, its the brand, if I buy a Canon, then I will be able to take good pictures' and so I somehow managed to convince my father on another business trip to purchase an EOS 1000 for me, this time I had actually done a small amount of research, it was one of the lower end EOS cameras, but it used the new AF lens mount, it had DX coding so you didn't have to set ISO and most importantly, as well as a bevy of auto modes it had manual control. And so, after waiting what seemed forever, my Father finally returned with the EOS 1000, and boy was it a change from my previous cameras, one of the new breed of 'lets make the entire camera out of plastic' cameras, the EOS had the build quality of a Barbie Doll, and it weighed about as much.

Placing this camera near a Lacombe compendium does not raise its classiness one single bitThis is not to say that I didn't like the camera, after all, compared to the Nikon, a used matchbox with a hole punched in it would have been an improvement. However, it just didn't 'feel' like I was taking pictures, the AF was nice, dog slow, but nice. The auto exposure was accurate enough that I slowly stopped shooting manual or even aperture priority, and due to the fact that the built in power winder was a little too strong, I couldn't use the B+W film I got from school as it was manually loaded onto re-usable spools, which the Canon would tear to shreds. As such, I slowly stopped shooting, the combination of having to pay for film and not having to do as much work to get the shot meant the fun was gone. Added to that, I had discovered a new found interest, video editing. With my interest consumed by the moving image, my Canon got used less and less, until in a pre-cursor to my eBay obsession I discovered a Bolex H-16 film camera that I simply had to own. And so, I sold the Canon.

I would not own another SLR for another 10 years.