Testing.......

ONE:

Tuna boat in the marina (taken from parking lot)

TWO:

Sunset in the bay

THREE:

Footprints in the sand - me and my dogs

FOUR:

Dogs at play - shot from about 1000 feet away

FIVE:

Bird on back fence - shot from back door.

Testing..... my new camera!

After much research and testing out numerous models, I have decided on a Sony Cybershot DSC H20. The above shots were taken before reading the instruction manual or figuring out how everything works - just messing around with the basic menu to get a feel for where things are. They were also taken just as the light was fading - not the best conditions for taking pictures.

It handles really nicely, has a great one-handed grip, and fits in my pocket. It doesn't have the viewfinder I would have liked, and it has a removable lens cap which may irritate me (on the other hand, the built-in lens cover getting dented or becoming immobilized with dirt or straw from my pocket meant death to my last three cameras!).

It has a bit less of a wide-angle than some I looked at, but the wide angle is the same as my old camera which I never found that problematic as I don’t take that many “wide angle” shots like groups of people. And the plusses of this camera far outweigh the minuses, in my opinion.

It has a great zoom, which can be made even more powerful by reducing the amount of megapixels. Lots of flexibility here. In fact, the camera can be used as a basic auto point and shoot, or switched to manual exposure mode allowing the user to set her own shutter speeds and aperture sizes.

Best of all (and this I didn't learn until after I bought it - but is a HUGE plus to me), it has the capacity to accomodate additional lenses with the use of an adaptor. In other words, by adding telephoto, wide angle, or closeup lenses (and filters, if desired), and using the manual exposure mode, I have a simplified form of a DSLR camera. The best of both worlds - portability of a pocket camera yet the option to do a bit more. And it has less shutter lag than any others I looked at or have previously owned, and a pretty good shot-to-shot and continuous frame speed which is somewhat faster than my previous camera.

At $299 (on sale at London Drugs this week), plus $30 for a spare battery and about $20 for a new memory card (my old one isn't compatible with Sony cameras), I came out well ahead price-wise compared to the Nikon P90 and the Panasonic I'd tried out before Christmas and ended up with more features and greater versatility. I'm a happy camper.

Now to learn more about how to use it effectively.