The hardest thing about creating new updates lately is that I don't have a real camera. I've done some work with disposables (which work surprisingly well), but obviously I'm sad about pretty damn decent camera malfunctioning, apparently for good. Do you think I could have it fixed easily at Cord Camera, or maybe Ritz, or a place like that? It might just need some kind of rebooting, though I've tried that a little. You see, I'm old-fashioned and I adhere to the 35mm cameras, even though I don't have one of those big Nikon units with various interchangeable telephoto lenses and filters and adjustable shutter speeds and everything. I've never had anything nicer than a cool, sleek little snap-open pocket camera (which took some great photos), and then the one I used until it broke about a months ago, which cost me $70 at Target in 2003. Now I find that they don't really sell cameras like that anymore, because digital has taken over.

I'm wary about digital photography because when I first started Forgotten Ohio (remember, this website is ancient by internet standards; it's about to celebrate it's TENTH anniversary in the spring) they often didn't take high-enough quality photos, in general, for my tastes. Scanning good-quality hard copies worked much better for me, and it had the added benefit of leaving me with a carefully indexed collection of hard copies to provide to my editors when newspaper and magazine articles came out--and, ultimately, made illustrating my books far easier. I know some 1998 digital cameras that captured nothing better than a medium-resolution JPEG, and publishers need at least high-quality TIFFs. Hard copies are always a good thing to have.

Now, however, I know that digital cameras can take photos of the highest quality, and they can provide color prints equal to those I get back from the one-hour photo. The problem is, they're really expensive. I'd love to get one of those really nice cameras, get some lessons on how to take the best photos, and just upload them directly and print them if I need to. Something just good enough, say with no more than an adjustable zoom, would be perfect as well, and would enable me to do a lot more work for the site. But I can't afford a few hundred dollars right now, so I'm hoping to find a reasonably decent-quality 35mm camera with an adjustable zoom. Developing the film is no problem, no matter how stone age it might be--but it seems they've nearly stopped selling new 35mm cameras of any quality, replacing them with an all-digital selection.

Does anybody have a decent camera they'd be willing to sell? Like I said, the kind of solid little thing you'd put in a purse or take on vacation, not necessarily anything fancy. Otherwise, have you heard of anything that still takes 35mm being sold, new, in someplace like Target? I just thought I'd ask. Camera problems have prevented me from photographing a bunch of wonderful sites I've come across in the past few months. But don't worry, it'll get resolved soon enough.

Halloween happened since my last update. I hope yours was fun and scary and all that good stuff. Mine was all of that, as well as busy. During that time I was interviewed for "haunted Ohio" stories by the Toledo Blade, as well as two radio stations in NE Ohio. The first was an all-nighter (1AM-5AM) on WCSB, Cleveland State, in-studio, hosted by the very amusing and talented Orin. Before the show he accompanied me on a tour of various downtown Cleveland haunts, photos of which will show up here before long. That was broadcast in the early morning hours of October 21. Then, on October 30, I was a morning show phone guest on Mix 94.1 Canton/Akron/Cleveland. The Blade interview was conducted by my old friend Angie Schmitt, who remembered me despite her journalistic rise to prominence with a major urban daily. (I remember her when she was a lowly political operative in the 2004 election.)

And now, embarassingly, we come to...