Cameras

This is technically not something that you "need to know", but I don't care. I recently became in need of a camera- cheap, hard-to-break, easy-to-use, point-and-shoot sort of thing (I can use more phrases that consist of three words stuck together with hyphens, if you like).
As any sane person would, I did some research. I hadn't purchased a camera since my old (now broken) film camera about, oh, 7 or 8 years ago. I've used digital cameras, even owned them, but they were all given to me by the previous owner. Therefore, I consulted the almighty internets to find out what I wanted.
I found that there are lots of nice things that I really don't need. There are also a lot of nice cameras that I don't need. I googled by price (low to high) to find out what was on the inexpensive end of the spectrum, and I found the Nikon "Cool pix" line (Spoiler- I didn't buy this one). It has plenty of nifty features, such as "smile recognition". I'm fairly certain that it would have been a good camera.
However, I also found the Samsung SL30. This one also had the smile recognition feature, which I was become attached to based on friends' cameras. The SL30 boasts 10.2 megapixel shots, which is actually kind of wimpy in comparison with, ah, a lot of other cameras. However, my above criteria included cheap. This was the least expensive- but still decent- camera I could find.
My camera is black. I believe there were other colours available.
It's really not that well-made. It has, however, been dropped on concrete while it was snowing. Aside from the batteries popping out and getting wet, it was fine. (Insider tip- wet batteries don't work. At all. Let them- and the battery compartment- dry thoroughly, at least overnight)
One startling discovery was that the camera did not come with a memory card. At all. It took about four pictures before flatly refusing to do more. Fortunately, I had a microSD card and adapter that came with a phone.
Also, the camera does not speak to OSX. However, the SD card can be placed in the SD card slot in my macbook pro. This makes it simple to put the pictures into the photo editing/viewing programme of your choice- either tell the programme to import them from the "Device" or drag-and-drop the files into the library, depending on the programme.
The actual pictures, for non-professional purposes, are quite satisfactory. The smile recognition works well, and the photos are less blurry than some hand-held point-and-shoots to which I am accustomed. As always, turning on the flash makes the pictures clearer and cleaner, but some fun effects can be achieved by turning it off. For example, a Christmas decoration hanging in my room made a bold contrast with the walls, and the fuzzy photo achieved without the flash emphasised this contrast.
The camera is by no means the best point-and-shoot, but I don't need the best. It works for a hardy camera to carry around and whip out when something photo-worthy happens.