Ok.. it’s time to admit it. I am just NOT good a being frugal.

Yes dear readers… I have failed again in my attempts to have an no spend month. But not on what you might be thinking.

It wasn’t fabric, it wasn’t clothes, it wasn’t even plants!

It was a motherlode of camera equipment.

So here’s how it happened…

I was browsing Facebook Marketplace. Not with the intention to actually buy anything. There are a certain style of canister from the ’70s I’m keeping my eye out for. I have several saved, though like my fish – most aren’t anywhere around here.

And Marketplace’s algorithms must be really weird, because I always get a bunch of random, unrelated things in my search results. One of those things was a digital SLR Canon camera.

Longtime readers will recall that I had and adored one for many, many, many, many years. Until the day I dropped it face-first on the lens, jamming up the focus mechanism. Dave tried to fix it, to no avail. The buttons on the camera were also getting sticky and non-co-operative (I believe they were full of salt from our trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in 2018).

At the time, I didn’t have the money to have it fixed, or buy a new one. Then with the move, and all the house stuff since, the camera was not a priority. My iphone took surprisingly good pictures and we got along just fine.

But back to that camera listing… it was was for a camera, slightly newer than mine, with lens for only a few hundred dollars. Definitely less than what it would cost me to fix mine, should I be so inclined.

It wasn’t anywhere close to here, so I wouldn’t be buying it. But it got me thinking (always the first step to disaster…)… what else was out there.

So I searched for digital SLR cameras in my area. And boy howdy… there are A LOT of them out there for sale!!! My theory is that phone cameras have advanced so much, for your average person who just wants to snap decent shots of family, friends and pets.. it doesn’t make sense to have anything fancier. (Not to mention the ease of which to upload those pictures to various apps and socials).

Again… I was really just browsing. I figured with so much out there, I could definitely wait until March to get one, if I was so inclined.

But then I saw the listing that contained all the things you see above. It included:

• 12 megapixel camera and standard lens
• Telephoto Lens
• Macro Lens
• Prime Lens
• External flash
• Remote trigger
• Tripod
• Bag
• Various lens filtres, and other lens attachments
• Cleaning kit

ALLLLLLL of that for just $600. WTF???? I re-read the listing six times just to be sure he didn’t really mean $1600. Even if I kept my camera body with it’s sticky buttons, I’d need almost $1000 to get all those lenses, not to mention the other goodies.

And even then – I didn’t jump on it. Dave and I had gone out for lunch that day, and I told him what I found. He, of course, told me to get it. He rarely tries to curb my spending, unless it involves getting another cat, or buying a 12ft skeleton for the yard.

Still… I decided to sleep on it.

And I woke up the next morning and promptly messaged the gentleman, hoping no one else had snapped up the amazing deal. They hadn’t and soon we were headed to Sarnia to pick it all up.

I STILL can’t believe my luck.

I haven’t had a tonne of time to play with it yet, but I’ve snapped a few pictures here and there. My iphone does take great pics… but

Just check out the amazing detail – in the whiskers, the fur around the nose… the sheer detail of just how annoyed Burton is at having the camera shoved in his face repeatedly!

I can’t wait to get outside – the telephoto is going to help me get pictures of all the birds and squirrels… and imagine the detail of all the little bugs I’m going to get in my garden with that macro lens!

Forget Frugal February! It’s now FABULOUS FIND FEBRUARY!