New Toy

I bought a new camera yesterday. I came to the realization that even the new mobile phones have more capabilities than my three year old 3.2 Megapixel, 4X zoom camera. As I am in such a target-rich environment for interesting photos and I am planning to travel more extensively in Europe and Asia this year, it made sense to upgrade.

I did a lot of research on mid-range cameras (that's half the fun!). I wanted one with a powerful zoom, relatively small size and Automatic features with the option for manual controls, all for under $500. I did not want a pure point and shoot nor did I want to return to my SLR days of lugging around a bunch of specialty lenses. A jack of all trades is what I needed. I am partial to Canons as my previous three cameras were that brand and ownership has been trouble-free so I concentrated on the Canon line.  

I had kind of settled on the Canon SX110 IS but a fellow blogger, Dave suggested that I look at the SX10 IS. That was a good tip as the latter has twice the auto-zoom (20X) of the former and a few more features that would be valuable to me. It was not too much extra money, either. The more I looked into it, the more I liked it. A solid camera with room for me to grow into. Decision made! By the way, Dave has a very good blog with excellent photos of the Abu Dhabi area. Click on the "From My Eyes to Yours" link in my blog list or:

 http://dwyllie.blogspot.com/

 

So I brought the SX10 IS home, popped a cold one and started to get acquainted with my new toy. The IS stands for Image Stabilization which is important with such a long zoom. It has a lot of other bells and whistles too as is characteristic of almost any high-tech gadget these days. In fact, the shear number of features is initially mind numbing for me. Look at (or click to enlarge) the above scan of page 49 in the User's Manual and you will see a complex amount of symbols, lines, charts, arrows, notes and descriptions. This page only describes the viewfinder functions! There are 287 other pages in the manual that look similar and they make a Boeing 777 flight manual look like a child's schoolbook. 

So as you might have guessed, you will see more interesting photos on the blog. They will be added gradually as I progress past the "Turning the Camera ON/OFF" chapter in the manual. That in itself may take a few days!