After some power shopping with Dan Bricklin (thanks, Dan!) and helpful and generous comments from y’all, I bought a Canon Powershot S60.

There are so many models that are so close in features, that ultimately it came down mainly to two factors: First, the Sony guy at Newtonville Camera said that the Sony DSC-V1 wasn’t “mainstream” and I should avoid it. He also liked the wider angle lens on the Canon. (It’s great dealing with a store that puts your interests first.) I was leaning towards a Canon anyway because my current Sony’s picture quality isn’t particularly good, even for a 2.1 megapixel truck. Second, the Canon S500 looks cool and weighs about as much as the idea of it, but I found it too cramped for elderly hand. So, the S60 is it.

I’ve been taking lots of pretty random photos and I’m basically delighted, with occasional flares of ignorance-based concern. The UI is complex — there is no end to the camera’s functionality — but after a couple of hours, I’m pretty well used to it. In Automatic mode, the thing takes brilliant photos: Sharp, colorful, and just pleasing. In Program AE mode, especially if I turn up the ASA, it gets very grainy fast. So, maybe I’m learning not to turn up the ASA. (I should mention that I have no idea what I’m doing.) Also worrisome: I went through a full charge of the battery in well under 100 photos, albeit all with the LCD on and many using the flash. Minor negative: I really dislike the photo management app that comes with it, all because of little, annoying things. For example — prepare for pettiness — the window that shows a photo full size doesn’t tell you the name of the file you’re looking at except in the title of the window, which means if you have a bunch of subdirectories, you have to drag the window into the next county to get to the file name. And the window that shows you all the photos on the camera does it only as a horizontal “film strip,” an annoying way to browse. Anyway.

Overall I’m really enjoying this camera as I get used to how it sees the world.

Categories: misc dw