Photo Joy and Woe
Jun 8th 2007WallabyGeneral & eyes
My faithful companion has died.
My Powershot A85 is no more.
Actually, it’s just fallen once too many times, and now it can’t adjust the zoom. It *is* stuck on the wide end rather than the tele end, at least, so it’s not totally hopeless. And in particular it makes me far more open to the idea of getting creative with the camera itself - been reading up on IR lately, and apparently some models have enough UV sensitivity to be worth it. And it still works, and quite well, in every other respect.
That did, however, leave me without a fully functional camera for the upcoming trip to the zoo. The zoo stuffed with penguins, to be visited with my sister, visiting the Frozen Northlands this week for her first time ever. Casual snapshots are one thing, but for pictures of penguins, only a good camera will do. Or at least that’s what I convinced myself. 
So I’ve got an A570 IS now, as I’d planned - I like it quite a lot so far, for everything except the size - the 85 was wider and heavier and felt more sturdy. Build quality does not seem to be the strong point of the Powershot A line - the 85 felt cheap and plastic too, but the 570 seems to have been put together like an especially cheap foreign car. 
The sister also has a camera - her first digital ever - welcome to the 21st Century, Sarah. Hers is also a Canon, the sleek SD 800 IS, which replaced the briefly-owned Nikon Coolpix L12. (Very unsatisfactory - it made a great ‘point and shoot’ snapshot camera outside, but in anything but full daylight the CCD noise was bad, and it had very bad autofocus. I don’t think I’ll bother to ever look at a Nikon point&shoot again.) Much better feel to the 800 - why can’t they use real metal on the A series? Hrmph.
Penguins beware, you shall be photographed. And probably recorded on video, too.
I think I’ll also do some side-by-side comparisons of the old and the two new… later.