retaking aim

Finally it has arrived!! After a month long drama with the first camera with the first company I ordered from I got a refund and bought this one from another company and a week later it was in my happy little hands.

My very own Canon PowerShot SX210 IS replaces my old pentax camera which I've had for years. About 12 years I think. Wow. It served me well. It's old and decrepit now. It has way too much trouble getting started. (Possibly because I've dropped it too many times. Especially that last major one in Luxembourg. :x ) I couldn't even get it to turn on for a 'new camera' picture. I had to take the above shot using my webcam and skype. Now I have the joy of whipping out my camera, turning it on and taking a shot within seconds again. Oh, and this one's a bit nicer and fancier than the last one too. I went on a shooting spree today to work out how to work it.

Only real downfall I've come across so far is using the flash close range. It leaves a shadow along the edge closest to the lens. That being said, like what I did with my fishbowl vase? Some birthday flowers were delivered to my door and my friend suggested that after the flowers had done their job I could fill it with lollies as I don't receive flowers very often at all. However, it's a big vase and I don't wish to be that round. Macro works nicely. The photos are so nice and crisp. That's the main upgrade I wanted from my old camera. Nice clear rich photos. Canon serves well there.

This camera packs quite a zoom for a point and shoot. At normal view. At full optical zoom. At full optical plus digital zoom. Not bad hey? You wouldn't have known that bridge was there otherwise, would you?

And then there's a bunch of fun features. Fish eye mode. Colour swap. You get to select the colours that you want to switch. Here I switched white for dark blue. It doesn't work so well when there is a varigated colour-shading. If it was a 2D solid colour it wouldwork better.

They have a few colour and lighting functions too. This is an example of using blue colour mode. The first is a normal shot. Makes the sky look lovely and blue.

But by far, this is my favourite feature to play with. Colour accent mode. You select one colour to remain and the rest of the picture is black and white. Lots of fun.

It also has a wink timer and a face timer. One is a self timer that takes the photo when you wink. The other is when it detects a new face in the shot. You can do lots of things manually like the typical shutter speed but also the flash strength and white balance and focus and more. There's continuous shot and night shots and video (oh you can do colour accent in video mode too) and stitch assistance even blink detection! Loads to play with. Of course there is much still to learn with this camera but I had a fun afternoon to start with. And I'm super happy I have a camera that functions well and as I need it. It's almost an essential item when you're adventuring on the otherside of the planet.