I had a bright idea. (No, seriously, it involved strong lighting so in truth, it was quite bright.) In short: I’ll take pictures of each of the duckies, most of which have been stored in a bin under the bed since we moved into this apartment over five years ago, and use them as a cute little pick-me-up where needed on social media or whatever.
This would help my mental health through mastering the technical aspects, through completing a low-risk low-intensity task, and through giving me a way to (possibly) put a smile on the faces of friends and strangers alike.
Too bad my camera crapped out barely a dozen snapshots into the whole project. Oh, turns out that the Nikon Coolpix line, and the B500 in particular, is prone to a weird freezing-up problem. You take a picture and the UI just never recovers. The camera’s still on, it shows on the screen what you’re looking at as you move it around, but absolutely none of the buttons or dials do anything anymore. Particularly the power button. The only solution is to pop out the batteries (which is a bit extreme, and not necessarily easy to deal with when the device is attached to a tripod).
I guess I should be glad the damned thing lasted this long, but still: Once again I am bad at researching major purchases. Maybe next month I’ll think about finding a replacement.