It’s a little unusual for me to make road trips this late in the year – I like the road best while it’s still warm outside. Yet I’ve hit the asphalt a lot this autumn. I’ve been sharing my Halloween trip with you lately, a trip down US 40 and the National Road in eastern Indiana. A particular friend and I make a point to take a road trip together every year, and this was our 2009 excursion. We spent most of our day in Wayne County, exploring Richmond and Centerville and spending a little money in the antique shops in Cambridge City. Also, the Michigan Road Historic Byway project has been heating up as my partner in the effort, blogger Hoosier Reborn, and I have been building support in Michigan Road counties south of Indianapolis. So I’ve spent a little time on the Michigan Road recently, and you know I love to do that.

2009 may go down for me as the year I began noticing vintage signs. I’ve already written one sign post (get it? sign post? signpost? I kill me!) this year, about the signage along the National Road in Vigo County. Here I go again!

My National Road friend and I got hungry midafternoon while antiquing in Cambridge City. So we stopped for very tasty tenderloin sandwiches at the Silver Dollar Lounge. The french fries were hot and crisp, too! Thee neon portion of their sign was lit.

Down the street a bit is the Drive-In Liquors sign, some of its neon also lit.

After Hoosier Reborn and I finished extolling the virtues of a Michigan Road Historic Byway to people interested in tourism and historic preservation in Madison the other day, I was hungry and went off in search of lunch. Seems like every other time I’ve been to Madison, Hinkle’s Hamburgers has been closed. But this day not only was it open, but their sign was on. I snapped this shot and then went in for a double cheeseburger. Mm mm!

After lunch, I walked Madison’s main drag for a little while snapping shots. This great neon sign lurks quietly a half block north of Main Street on Mulberry Street. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a neon Independent Order of Odd Fellows sign before, and I’ve seen a lot of Odd Fellows buildings in my travels. I wonder when it was last lit.

I followed the Michigan Road home from Madison. The road followed two routes through Ripley County. The original 1830s route remains a lovely drive along a narrow country road. But when the automobile came to prominence in the early 20th century, Michigan Road signs went up on a parallel route slightly to the east, along what is now US 421 through Versailles (that’s ver-sales to you, bud) and Osgood. In Versailles, the Moon-Lite Motel’s sign was partially lit, so I stopped for a photo.

The last time I passed through Osgood, the Damm Theatre was still undergoing restoration, and its sign was down. This isn’t the original sign, but it’s a nice reproduction.

The Michigan Road passes by a Coca-Cola bottling plant on Shelbyville’s north side, just before it crosses the Big Blue River. I was delighted to find the neon sign over its front door lit.

If you like signs, too, then check out my twilight visit to Logansport, Indiana.

Everybody who collects rangefinder cameras knows Canon’s Canonet line. Canon made something like 14 different models of Canonet from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, and sold millions and millions of them. I’ve wanted Canonets for my collection for a long time. I was most attracted to the original 1961 Canonet with its “electric eye” (selenium) light meter all around the lens, and the the highly regarded “poor-man’s Leica” 1971-1982 Canonet QL17 G-III. But I ended up buying a Canonet 28, certainly among the least-loved in the series.

It’s not that the Canonet 28 is a poor camera. It’s just that on the used market, a working top-of-the-line QL17 GIII can be had for under $50. I routinely see Canonet 28s go for well under $20, but the QL17 G-III’s features are so much better that the 28 just isn’t as interesting for that cost difference.

Why, then, did I buy this 28? Because it came with a working Canolite D flash, which syncs with several Canonets including the QL17 G-III I still planned to buy. I’d been watching them sell for $10-20 by themselves, so it was hard to pass this one up when it came with this Canonet 28 for $12.

The Canonet 28 was made from 1971 to 1976. (Many call it the “new” Canonet 28, because Canon made a different camera with the same name in the 196os). It’s 40mm f/2.8 lens has four elements in three groups – not as fast or as fine as the QL17 G-III’s glass, but still many steps up from most other cameras aimed at the casual photographer. Its quiet leaf shutter is tied to shutter-priority autoexposure; it meters light through a cadmium sulphide (CdS) meter on the lens barrel. Unfortunately, it uses a banned mercury PX625 battery, although size 625 Wein cell (zinc-air) batteries should work well enough. Without the battery, setting manual exposure is limited. You can set aperture, but the camera fixes the shutter speed (at about 1/60 second, so I’ve read), limiting its usefulness.

My Canonet 28 arrived in good cosmetic shape, although only a thin sticky goo remained where the light seals had been. The camera seemed to work right mechanically, though, as best as I could tell without a 625 battery to test the autoexposure system. So with my usual why-wait attitude, I dropped a couple AA batteries in the Canolite, loaded a roll of Fujicolor 200 into the Canonet, set the aperture at f/8, and went around the house snapping shots hoping for the best. I was very surprised that all my photos turned out, with no sign of light leaks. If I had thought I’d get decent results, I would have chosen subjects more interesting than the futon in my family room!

This is my bedroom. I haven’t bought curtains yet; I keep spending home-decorating money on vintage cameras!

Three shots showed colored spotting. Unfortunately, all of those shots were of my sons, and my policy has been not to publish photos of them online. Most of the spots were a faint blue, but one photo had a big red blotch in the middle of it. Another of my bedroom photos had a funny marks on it, which turned out to be scratches on the negative. I haven’t figured out whether the camera or the photofinisher scratched the film.

While I’m pleased that these photos turned out, I’m not in love with the Canonet 28. It is competent enough, but nothing about it felt special. I may try dropping a battery in it one day to see how it does using autoexposure, but I expect it to sit on my shelf for quite some time first.

Do you like vintage cameras? Then check out my entire collection.

As my friend and I drove into Centerville, I thought for a moment that we had driven through a tear in the fabric of time and space and had found ourselves on the National Road in Maryland. At first glance, Centerville reminded me a lot of Maryland’s New Market, with its row houses right on the edge of the road. Like New Market, Centerville is a major destination for antiques shoppers.

While Centerville isn’t as old as New Market (which dates to 1792), Centerville is an old town by Indiana standards, having been laid out in 1814. Quakers were first to settle here. When the National Road came in the 1830s, it was natural for it to run through Centerville. Check out more of Centerville’s history.

My favorite building in Centerville is the Lantz House. Wagonmaker Daniel Lantz built it in the 1820s. His home was the left half of the building; his shop, the right. Today all of it is a bed and breakfast.

The current owner restored the house in the early 1990s. I really enjoyed the strength of the entry.

Did you notice the arches in two of the photos above? Centerville has five such arches in the buildings that line the National Road. Originally, the road had a 100-foot right-of-way. In 1816 (or 1818; sources disagree) Centerville became the Wayne County seat. With the increased activity that brought, the right-of-way was reduced to 65 feet, and property owners added to the existing buildings along the road, bringing them right out to the road’s edge. The arches were an innovative way of providing access to the original buildings behind. Today, each arch is marked with a plaque like this one, telling when it was built and who owned the building at the time. This plaque is attached to the building below, next to its arch. Centerville celebrates its arches each August with the Archway Days festival.

Centerville wasn’t the first seat of justice in Wayne County; a town called Salisbury was. Salisbury no longer exists, but a Salisbury Road still runs north-south just west of Richmond. At any rate, this 1811 log cabin was the courthouse in Salisbury. It was reconstructed here in Centerville in either 1952 or 1998, depending on which of the two plaques you believe. It is the only log courthouse still standing from the old Northwest Territory.

Centerville isn’t the current seat of justice in Wayne County; Richmond has been since 1873. The decision to move the county seat caused an uproar in Centerville; residents fought back. It went so far that when Richmond officials came to get the county records from the courthouse (below), someone from Centerville fired a cannon loaded with scrap iron at them. The courthouse still bears punctures from the shrapnel. Read the whole story. The courthouse is now the town’s library.

Centervillians had quite an ornery streak, actually. This is the Mansion House Inn, completed in 1840. It was a stop for National Road travelers and was known for the gambling that went on inside. In 1858 a group of Centerville women, up in arms over such immorality in their city, axed their way through the inn’s door and destroyed the inn’s stock of whiskey barrels, letting the liquor spill into the street. A judge ordered the women to pay for the damage they caused, which came to about $3,000. That had to be an astronomical sum at the time!

I stop in a lot of small Indiana towns on my road trips, but I’ve enjoyed few as much as I enjoyed Centerville.

The National Road is especially lovely across Maryland. Read more about it.

Milestones were placed along much of the National Road; many original milestones (and some replicas) still stand in Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. But for some reason, only two milestones still stand in Indiana. The first is one mile east of Centerville, four and a half miles west of Richmond, and nine miles west of the Ohio state line.

The other is three miles west of Centerville, six miles west of Cambridge City, and 13 miles west of the state line.

These two milestones are on private property, which may be why they still stand. I wonder whether there were other Indiana National Road milestones and, of so, what became of them.

If you like the National Road, you might like reading everything else I’ve written about it.

I spent the summer of 1984 in Germany on an Indiana University exchange program with 29 other Indiana high-school German students. I lived with a kind and patient family in Krefeld for six of the seven weeks I was there; we young Hoosiers spent the seventh week in Berlin.

Germany was still divided in 1984. We could not know that in five years the Cold War would end, marked dramatically on our televisions by video of East Germans spilling over the Wall and through its checkpoints. We had all seen photos of it in our history books, of course, and maybe even in our German texts. We had heard the story of how the Wall went up “virtually overnight” to keep East Germans from escaping to the West. The whole concept of keeping the East Germans in seemed sad and silly, yet it happened half a world away and seemed remote. So I was unprepared for the Wall when I saw it.

The Wall was at least twice my height, effectively blocking the view into the East except for tall structures near the border. Its rounded top made it hard to scale.

It stood several feet behind a railing, which marked the actual border between east and west. Step over the railing and you were on shaky ground. The sign says, “Attention, you are now leaving West Berlin.”

The railing made a wide strip around West Berlin into a no-man’s land. These shots are of the Brandenburg Gate, finished in 1791. It teemed with people until 1962, when the Wall was built.

We crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie and saw the Gate’s other side from behind a fence. Nobody could get close to this grand symbol of Berlin from either side.

Back in West Berlin, the wall stopped next to the Reichstag where the Spree River flowed by.

It was a popular place for East Berliners to try to swim to freedom, at least until the East German government lined the river with barbed wire. These eight people were either caught up in it or were shot by border guards as they tried to cross. Here we were told that the no-man’s land behind the Wall was heavily mined and, in some places, lined with weapons that fired automatically.

This is where I fully grasped the Wall’s reality. At first, I had felt frustrated by it, as the roaming American in me was not used to being prevented from going where I pleased. Then I felt saddened that it kept historic sites off limits to everybody. But when I saw these crosses, and the watchtower that loomed near them, I finally understood the real power and control being exerted over an entire people.

I spent but a few hours in East Berlin. Every building was old, gray, and dilapidated, compared with the many gleaming new structures in the West. I saw few cars on the roads in East Berlin, but most of the ones I did see were tiny, noisy, smoke-belching, plastic-resin-bodied Trabants as in the photo at left; the roads in West Berlin were choked with traffic, with cars of every make and model produced across Europe and Japan. I stood in the Alexanderplatz watching people going about their business, noticing the downcast silence with the average East German went about his business, especially compared with the exuberance I had experienced in the nightlife on the hot Ku’damm in West Berlin the night before. And then, as my group passed by the Neue Wache building, a military procession began. Everybody stopped to watch the goose-stepping soldiers in their show of miltary strength; the onlookers’ faces showed dull acceptance.

Nature called while I stood on the Alexanderplatz. A sign pointed to a public toilet; it turned out to be a fetid underground pit into which men peed in plain view of each other. Unable to abide the stench, I sought out a restaurant, hoping to find facilities. A hunched-over old man was stationed in the tiny restroom, requiring a 10-pfennig coin to access the stalls and doling out short strips of toilet paper. Such is the nature of communism’s promise of full employment. I lacked coins, and the man would not change a bill, and so I held it until I returned to the West.

It was in experiencing the Wall, and spending those few hours in the East, that I first appreciated the great gifts of freedom I had always enjoyed.

One November morning five years later, I had just started to make my breakfast before dressing and going to work when the radio told me the news of the Wall’s end. I sat at my kitchen table and cried, simultaneously recalling my feelings of shock and sadness from my brief glimpses into East German life, and feeling joy for those people and the hope of better lives for them all.

I’ve touched on my trip to Germany twice before, about the joys of it, and about how I thought it put me in hot water with the FBI.

The National Road crosses from Ohio into Indiana and almost immediately enters Richmond, founded in 1806 by Quaker settlers. So Richmond is one of the rare National Road towns in Indiana that predates the road. The National Road isn’t even the oldest road leading out of town – a road to Eaton, Ohio, was built in 1807, about 30 years before the National Road. It seems likely to me that the Eaton road was used as part of the Dayton Cutoff.

The road entered Richmond from the east on Main Street. Glen Miller Park was located along the road; in 1928, a Madonna of the Trail was placed on the southwest corner of the park at 22nd St.

Many lovely older homes line the road near the Madonna.

US 40 was widened to four lanes across Indiana in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Here’s the eastbound road on its way to downtown.

Along the way, it passes a McDonald’s that still sports an older sign. Dig those golden arches that touch the ground.

Richmond is a little smaller, at least in population, than Terre Haute at the other end of the road in Indiana. Yet somehow its downtown seems larger, with many more intact and cared-for buildings from earlier days. That’s especially remarkable given that an explosion leveled half of downtown Richmond in 1968. The blast killed 41, injured 127, and destroyed 20 buildings.

Fortunately, much of downtown remains. It was impossible to drive this section of the National Road starting in 1972 as Richmond closed it to traffic and built a pedestrian mall. Fortunately, the town came to its senses in 1997, tearing it all back out, repaving the road, and reopening it to traffic.

A few buildings have not been very well loved.

This building really stands out, the only one downtown with such a modern skin. I would not be surprised to find that an 1800s building lurks beneath this facade.

Many pleasing touches remain in downtown’s details, such as this neon sign.

Just beyond downtown stands the Wayne County Courthouse. It was built in the Romanesque Revival style in 1893.

I made this trip with a friend and she noticed that every door had this little notice on it. She was chuckling over it and I didn’t understand why. I guess my head was into taking photos, because she had to explain it to me. Do you see what’s funny about it?

The National Road was routed along Main Street west through downtown, passed by the courthouse, crossed the Whitewater River, and then jogged south a block and then headed west along National Rd. I haven’t been able to figure out exactly where the road transitioned from Main to National Rd.;  perhaps a Richmond historian will happen upon this post and share.

I’ve visited three other Madonnas of the Trail, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Illinois. Check out the photos.

My road-loving colleague Denny Gibson tells the story best, but when the National Road was laid out across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the Federal Government mandated that the highway be laid out as straight as possible between the three states’ capitals. That meant that the road would not pass through the Ohio towns of Eaton and Dayton, which irked officials there. So they took matters into their own hands, building a road from Springfield, through Dayton and Eaton, to the eastern edge of Richmond just inside Indiana. They put up blatantly false signs at either end proclaiming it to be the National Road and even duplicated the National Road’s milestones along the route. Over time, this road was improved while the competing section of the National Road was not. It worked; more traffic followed what became known as the Dayton Cutoff than followed the National Road. This lasted until the 1920s, when the current numbered route system was instituted, the National Road was signed as US 40, and Ohio state highway funds finally improved the National Road west of Springfield. US 40 became the favored road, even though the Dayton Cutoff was signed as US 35 between Richmond and Dayton.

Here’s where the Dayton Cutoff and the National Road coverge on Richmond’s east end. The Cutoff is highlighted in blue. The Eaton and Dayton subterfuge was so successful that, in Indiana, the Dayton Cutoff is signed as Old National Road even today!

You can still drive most of the Dayton Cutoff. Unfortunately, a railroad crossing was removed just inside Indiana, orphaning its last half mile. Here’s what that orphaned section looks like now, heading east.

This is the where the Cutoff ends in Richmond. The road originally followed the driveway on the left. I assume that, at one time, US 40 was level with that driveway.

Denny Gibson traveled the whole route a few years ago, taking photos along the way. Check out his trip report.

If you like the National Road, you might like reading everything else I’ve written about it.

Our separation was meant to last but a month, but then she didn’t want me back. I had been living in an awful extended-stay hotel, digging a big financial hole by paying the rent with a credit card. I still held out some hope we’d reconcile but the road back looked long. So I looked for an apartment I could afford while still supporting my family in our home. Thank God my paychecks covered my family’s needs with some left over.

But the leftovers afforded me very little. My choices were few, mostly in bad neighborhoods. The apartments were always small and usually broken down. I ended up choosing the place that was closest to my children. It was especially tiny – just three hundred square feet.

Three photographs capture almost all of it. One wall contained built-in storage and a Murphy bed. A friend gave me the TV.

Around the corner was a tiny kitchen and a tinier bathroom.

Looking out from the kitchen and across the Murphy bed, the outer wall was five steps away. The folding chairs and my exercise ball were my only furniture. The eight-dollar Wal-Mart floor lamp was my main light source.

The carpet was stained, the bathroom door had a deep gouge in it, the electric heater was very loud, and I could feel the springs in the thin mattress (heaven knows how many had slept on it before me), but the place became home, whether I liked it or not.

We couldn’t pull our marriage back together, and my wife filed for divorce. Our case ended up going to trial, and because the court was badly backlogged I ended up living in this apartment for 18 months.

And so I came to terms with my marriage’s end here, with many nights spent lying awake in anguish and anger over losing my family. I wished I had the luxury to focus on healing, but I still had to work a demanding job to pay for everything, be a father to my children, do considerable preparation for the trial, and manage difficult interactions with my soon-to-be ex-wife.

The maxim about how to boil a frog says that if you plop him in boiling water he’ll jump out, but if you cover him in cold water and heat him gradually he’ll cook to death. Similarly, I did not realize how much our destructive marriage consumed us until my wife did me the favor of ejecting me from the hot water. The stress had been intense, to the point of compromising my health. But the separation traded stress for stress, the likes of which I had never known. I suffered from chronic insomnia; I lost 20 pounds. Were it not for a web of friends and family who prayed for me and took my phone calls at all hours of the day, I do not think I would have made it through.

Because of them, I was able to begin regaining the inner strength I had lost. I had compromised my integrity so often in the marriage, sometimes from my shortcomings and sometimes in desperation to keep my family together, that I had utterly lost myself. Through that my relationships with my sons had stalled and were decaying. I began the hard work of rebuilding.

My little apartment was the safe place I needed to do the work. That’s ironic, because the apartment complex wasn’t really a safe place. A steady stream of people, eyes darting about nervously, visited two apartments across the way looking for a fix. And it was whispered that a prostitution ring was being run out of a few apartments at the back of the complex. Yet the two likely drug dealers were respectful and occasionally congenial when we encountered each other in the parking lot (where they both parked immaculate white Caddies loaded with gold trim). And one of the alleged prostitutes kept knocking on my door at all hours asking for money until I said, “Are you hungry? If so, I’ll take you to the store and buy you whatever you need,” which chased her away for good. But otherwise none of the funny business touched me. Except for jump-starting a few cars when word got around that I had cables, and being awakened late one night to call an ambulance for a neighbor who had taken badly ill but could not afford a phone, I was left alone. The place was as quiet as a tomb, the silence broken only occasionally when a washing machine went off balance in the laundry room next door. Not sleeping gave me time to do the work, and having few amenities at home and so little money made it hard for me to distract myself or run away. So I buckled down, took a hard look at how far out of true I had gone, and made slow but steady progress back to myself.

Slowly, things started to get better. I learned to accept the pain and let go of my marriage. I found ways to snatch a little serenity here and there. I started to manage the stress more effectively. I began to look forward to my future. And best of all, I started to get tight with my sons again. We used to fold up the Murphy bed and play a rough game on the floor where I’d get on my knees, the boys would try to run past me, and I’d reach out and tackle them on their way by. The boys called the game “Attack Dad,” but I never figured out whether they thought they were attacking Dad or I was the Attack Dad. I can’t explain it, but that game was a tonic for us, almost singlehandedly restoring trust and good feelings.

I drive by this apartment complex a lot today; it’s on the way to church and the grocery store. Sometimes as we pass the boys remark on a memory of our days there. They sometimes say how they hated sleeping on bedrolls on the floor, but more often they bring up Attack Dad or some other good memory from those days. I thought I had left the apartment with more good memories than bad, feeling predominantly grateful for it and how much I grew during that time. Yet not long ago when I stumbled upon the photos I’ve shared here, my mind and body flooded with echoes of the pain I felt then. It took several days for the shock to subside and for me to regain my center. This has forcefully reminded me just how far I’ve come from the crushing stress I faced for so long and its effects on me. I am amazed now that I was able to function in those early months in the apartment. I have no explanation other than I had to be in God’s hand.

I’ve shared very little here about my five-year journey since the separation. My blog has mostly been about who I’ve become since those awful days – it’s an expression of the joy I feel in having found myself again. I’m not sure why I feel compelled to share this story with you now. But here it is, and I hope it provides some context for the rest of what I write here.

The few other posts in which I’ve touched on the journey are here, here, here, and here.

The road-trip season is winding down. I have one more road trip planned for this year, a trek down the National Road in eastern Indiana this coming weekend. The rain we’ve had in the past week has removed much of the excellent fall color we’ve had this season – I hope the remaining color hangs on a few more days for our trip.

As autumn wraps up, however, the wildflower season seems to as well. I paid almost no attention to wildflowers until I started making road trips a few years ago. Their color and variety make them hard to ignore when I’m exploring an old bridge or walking the edge of an old alignment! So I slow down and take them in – and photograph them – when I see them.

Yet I know so little about them. I try to look them up online to identify them, but often my search comes up empty. I’d love it if somebody would perfect reverse image search. I’d like to upload my flower photo and have the Internet tell me what it is!

And so I did not find out what these pretty yellow flowers are. Theywere plentiful along a forgotten alignment of US 40 and the National Road in Indianapolis near the Hendricks County line, growing among some Queen Anne’s lace and chicory.

I also couldn’t identify these white flowers, which I found growing in vines last May near an abandoned bridge on old US 50 near Clay City, Illinois.

I’ve known the weed below all my life; they grow all over Indiana. I remember they were especially prolific at my grandparents’ palatial retirement estate in rural southwestern Michigan. I think it’s an ox-eye daisy. I found this resourceful one actually growing out of the deck of that abandoned bridge. Its root system can’t be very deep – the deck is only a few inches thick. I gather that the ox-eye daisy is considered a noxious weed in several states – it tends to take over wherever it grows.

Clumps of these purple flowers, which I think are phlox, grew along a 1919 bridge on the National Road just east of the Illinois border. The sun was very bright that afternoon.

I have no idea what this is, but bunches of it were growing along the Marshall County road on which the Chief Menominee monument stands.

The prolific black-eyed Susan really pops along the roadside all summer. I shot these along a gravel alignment of the National Road near Reelsville. While I shot all the other flowers in this post with my Kodak Z730, I shot this on film with my Minolta X-700. It reminds me of four pupils attentive to the teacher, with one in the back row daydreaming.

If you can identify any of the flowers I can’t, please enlighten me in the comments!

This is my second annual post about roadside flowers. Check out last year’s flowers!

Even though I’ve collected cameras for 30 years, I’ve only had a decent everyday camera for the past few years. By “decent,” I mean a point-and-shoot camera with autofocus and zoom, by no means anything fancy. I am a cheapskate, you see. I used garage-sale fixed-focus cameras until my budding road hobby made me wish for slightly more respectable equipment. I dangled my toes in the water in 2006 when I bought an Olympus Stylus Epic Zoom 80, but even then I picked it up for $20 on eBay. The little Stylus came with me every time I hit the road, and the results were so good that I wanted to share my photos online. I put up my personal site and posted photos from my first three road trips (see them here, here, and here).

I found myself shooting lots of film, and my wallet was feeling the pinch from having it all developed. I figured that if I bought an entry-level digital camera it would pay for itself within three or four road trips. So I went shopping. Based on Philip Greenspun’s recommendations (at the time) on photo.net I settled on the Kodak EasyShare Z730. Not only did Mr. Greenspun have nothing but good things to say about it, but Kodak was selling refurbished units for far, far less than list price. I love a bargain, so I bit.

I figured I was going to be like the guy who’d owned a succession of beater cars but had just bought his first new car – basic transportation, a Hyundai, maybe. The Hyundai isn’t anything special, to be sure, but it would seem wonderful compared to the discarded ‘82 Buick that didn’t always start. After a while, the Hyundai would show its true colors as an entry-level car.

I was wrong. More than two years on, I enjoy this camera as much as when it first arrived. That’s not to say it’s a great camera – true to Kodak’s mission, it’s a point-and-shoot for the masses. It’s just highly competent.

The Z730’s five-megapixel resolution was on the small side even when I bought the camera, but who really makes huge enlargements? What it lacks in resolution, it makes up for in lens; its f/2.8 Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon is very sharp. It’s also a bit wide, at 33mm, which is good for roadscapes. If I’ve ever talked to you about this camera, I’ve probably said it sports a 28mm lens, which is just wishful thinking. I’d love to have a 28mm lens. It does have a 4x zoom, though. It lacks image stabilization, but shake seems to be a problem only at maximum zoom. I have found that if I back off a hair from max, my photos are crisp.

The Z730 is ready to shoot within a couple seconds of turning it on, and its autofocus quickly sizes up a shot. I seldom have to wait for it. I’ve missed shots only while trying to turn the camera on – the mode-selector dial, which doubles as the on/off switch, is fiddly and hard to work. While I’m complaining, I might as well mention that the sun washes out the little 2.2-inch LCD, but at least the Z730 has an optical viewfinder. Also, the battery that came with the camera was good for only about 300 shots, which isn’t enough when I’m on the road. I bought a stouter battery and have shot 700 in a day with it. Finally, its aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and manual modes are limited. The Z730 is aggressively about pointing and shooting, not about giving control to the photographer.

But I haven’t needed much control to get good results with the family snapshots and roadside landscapes that make up the bulk of my photographs. The Z730’s autofocus, coupled with its strong lens, does a great job nearly all the time.

This photo is of the original alignment of US 36 in Parke County, Indiana. (Yes, the original route was a dirt road.) I love the vibrant greens in this shot.

The Z730 excels in diffused and indirect light. This covered bridge is also in Putnam County, not far from the road above.

I took this photograph of the Michigan Road (US 421) in Decatur County on a hot and hazy day.

This shot, north of Rochester on the Michigan Road (old US 31), is the abutment from a one-lane truss bridge that used to cross the Tippecanoe River.

I’ve had a lot of fun shooting wildflowers by the roadside with the Z730’s macro mode. I am so pleased with the detail the lens brings out.

It’s somewhere between difficult and impossible to control depth of field on the Z730. I just press the macro button and hope for the best. Sometimes you get a little bokeh, as above; sometimes you don’t, as below.

At the other extreme, this camera was born to take photos of big brick buildings against the blue sky. This is the Johnson County Courthouse in Franklin.

This is Eminence High School, along State Road 42 in Morgan County.

I’ve also been happy with how well the Z730 handles available light. I left the flash off during my entire visit to the 2009 Mecum Original Spring Classic auction at the Indiana State Fairgrounds last May. To be fair, the joint was bathed in fluorescent light.

This shot, of the State Theater on State Road 25 in Logansport, does a better job of showing how well the Z730 handles available light.

The good results I get from my Z730 have encouraged me to learn a little about photography. I always wanted to take better photographs, and because a digital camera shows results instantly, I’ve found it easy to practice. I’ve read a little bit about composition and light, and have had fun experimenting. This photo, of South Bend’s State Theater, was one of the first times I moved in close. I still like the result. (I saw my first movie, Bambi, here when I was little.)

Wandering around Downtown Indianapolis with my camera one afternoon, I was looking for good interplay among the planes of buildings and signs. I especially like how this shot turned out.

I also spent some time at Crown Hill Cemetery shooting the James Whitcomb Riley gravesite. I like the monument’s strength in this shot. (This is the highest point in Indianapolis. On a clear day, you can see Downtown four miles to the south.)

At the muscle car auction, I shot a lot of car details. I learned a lot and got some satisfying results, such as this photo of the hood scoop on a 1970 Dodge Super Bee.

I’ve also practiced getting in closer when photographing people. My favorite subjects have been my sons, and I have some great shots of them, but in deference to their mother I don’t publish their photos online. You’ll have to settle for a photo I took of my dog! Gracie is a frequent road-trip companion. I fold down the back seats of my wagon, spread out her blanket, and off we go. She comes along on the leash when I stop to explore, and by the end of the day she’s usually so whipped that she snoozes soundly all the way home. I took this photo as we were heading home after a long day exploring US 50 in Illinois. (Check it out at its full size – you can almost count her hairs.)

I’ve enjoyed taking photos with my Z730 more than with any camera I’ve ever owned, and I’ve owned a lot of cameras. But there are times now that I’d like to have more control that a better camera would bring. And I really want a wider lens! I’m currently drooling over the Canon S90 and I’ve flirted a bit with the Nikon D40. But both of them represent investments I’m not willing to make right now (see above, re: cheapskate). And if there’s anything my Kodak Z730 has taught me, it’s that even a meager camera can do a great job.

If you like old cameras, check out my entire collection.