Kwajalein. Srsly.: Why expensive cameras are expensive

The fact that I carry a camera with me everywhere I go isn't abnormal. Everyone's cell phone has a camera in it, and even then most people have a nice little point and shoot digital camera that they can drop in their pocket at a moment's notice. A little pocket shooter is as much a staple of any purse or man-bag as chap stick or car keys. They're cheap, the quality is decent, and most importantly, they're idiot-simple and amazingly tiny. This is perfectly sufficient for sane people.

I, on the other hand, insist on hauling around a backpack full of camera bodies and lenses everywhere I go. And I do mean everywhere; My camera followed me to Antarctica, India, Alaska and the Arctic Circle. But when I came to Kwaj, I figured that there was one place it wouldn't be able to follow me: underwater.

Of course, as soon as I got here, what did I find? By complete chance, someone selling a housing for my EXACT camera and lens.

Camera gear is like crack to me; it's expensive, it's probably going to be the fiscal ruin of me, but I will never be able to turn it down. So even though I waffled about it for a couple weeks, even though I already HAD an underwater point-and-shoot camera, even thought it was way more money then I wanted to spend . . . I bought it.

My name is Brendan, and I'm an addict.

With the cost of the housing, the lens, and the body, there's around $3,000 dollars that I drag through the ocean with me. Now why, when I had already had a decent $300 underwater camera, did I spend $3,000 on one?

Because $3,000 cameras take pictures like this.

I do not understand what biological or evolutionary imperative there is for anything to be this brilliantly colored. They are positively luminescent, glowing with astonishing radiance when the sun hits them at the right angle.