new camera

So my trusty old Canon finally crapped out on me. That thing had seen everything from the constant heat of the Egyptian desert to the ice cold water of a stream in the Grand Canyon and managed to hold out through all that. But it just couldn't take the move to Boston I guess. Oh well, overall a reliable and easy-to-use camera, even if the photo quality of high-contrast landscape pictures wasn't something to write home about.

Well, most of the pics I shoot are of high-contrast landscape settings. As tempted as I was to get another Canon just for their reliability (and the ease of being able to use AA batts), I wanted something with some proven picture-taking quality. I know a few folks with Sony's and their pictures always seem to come out well, and Consumer Reports ranks their subcompact models right at the top of the list for quality and overall value both, so I decided to try one of those out this time.

So...the new camera. So far it's very nice. The 10-megapixel, 3200 ISO, and 5x optical zoom are probably overkill (by a lot) for my picture-taking skills, but the high ISO should at least help prevent blurry pictures in dark settings. Small enough to carry in a pocket (big deal on hiking trips for which loading and unloading a backpack can be a pain both figuratively and literally), big LCD screen, easy to use (though I haven't even scratched the surface of its features yet), and seems to take good pictures outdoors. It's very fast too, with much less first-shot and next-shot delay than I'm used to.

The only downside so far has been cost. That's a big one though, and thankfully so far this guy has been worth the hefty upcharge. It's a good $100 more than many comparable models and even considerably more expensive than other Sony's, even with the decent price I got at Circuit City. (Those people must rejoice every time they see me walk in the door now.) Consumer Reports said its only drawback was the lack of indication for the shutter being adjusted and ready to shoot, but I played with the options for a few minutes and figured out how to add that feature as well as very helpful gridlines on the screen. This should make one wonder just how much the CR gurus really play with the cameras they test as opposed to just checking a handful of basic capabilities. One thing that concerns me is the whole too much heat and not enough space to dissipate it thing, but time will tell whether or not that's a factor.

Overall I'm impressed. I can't recommend it yet, but it's a Sony and I paid good money (to me) for it so I have high hopes.