Woffling On

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Canon A610 is Loads of Fun

Well our new Canon digital camera is quite a treat. We are having tons of fun with it. Somehow, for the first time ever, we seem to be remembering to take it everywhere we go. Amazing!

Maybe it's the size, the thing is just so portable. I went shopping with my daughter who bought me a camera bag that should be ideal. It is large enough to comfortably hold the camera without being so big it can move around too much. There's also plenty of room for spare batteries (4 x AAs) and a spare card holder, not that I expect we'll need it.

The bag is padded enough to protect the camera from bumps but not so padded that it looks or feels bulky. The opening is large enough so the camera goes in and out easily, without taking the skin off my fingers and it has no sharp edges to sratch anything in the process. Nice that. It attaches to a belt and also has a shoulder strap that quickly clips on if wanted.

The issue of scratching things in the process of putting the camera in the bag and taking it out seems to be quite important. Fortunately, with the Canon A610 there needn't be any concern. The lens retracts behind a secure cover automatically when powering down so it is quite safe and the LCD screen on the back can be turned inwards facing so it can't possibly be scratched on the screen surface either. Pretty smart design I'd say.

Unfortunately I can't use the camera bag yet because it is to be a gift for Christmas and my daughter just loves to have wrapped gifts under the tree. Not to worry, I'm happy to wait.

We have taken the camera on a few outings already and seem to learn some new features each time. Mind you, there's plenty to learn. This camera does so many things!

On a picnic by the local lake we fed some of Jenny's delicious gourmet omlet to the resident magpies. They loved it and we quickly had quite a tribe of birds around us. It was really very noisy because it was a collection of magpie families, with plenty of demanding juveniles wanting their parents to feed them.

Suddenly...ah!, the camera. After some fumbling we managed to get a couple of quick shots in and then decided to grab a short video of this spontaneous performance. We just love the ability of a 'still' camera to change into a video camera so we can record short movies, complete with sound. Fantastic!

I can't get over just how well documented this camera is too. There's a quick start guide that is quite short. It helps you get the camera operational and coveres a few basic uses. With quickly built confidence I was into the advanced guide, and it is a much thicker booklet. Fortunately, the documentation is both thorough and actually useful. Even I can understand it ;-)

Happily I will be spending some hours watching cricket over the next week so I'll do two things at once and also read the documentation. There is just so much in there to learn.

So, for this very early report on my experiences with the Canon A610 I'd conclude by saying we are completely delighted with the purchase and we're pretty excited about all the places we plan on taking it!

By the way, we bought the camera from an online store in Forest Lake, a suburb of Brisbane. They are called White Knight Computers and if you are looking for ultra low prices and the best service I have encountered anywhere in many years, I highly recommend them to you. The camera was $499 at our local camera store and we bought it for $401.95 delivered to our door.

We also bought an SD memory card. We bought that from an eBay Powerseller. The local store wanted $149.95 for the 1 GB card and we got ours for $88.95 delivered. It is the same brand, sold in the same pack, with the same 5 year warranty, complete with Aussie tax invoice so why pay more?

Our next little camera related adventure will be sourcing and setting up some sort of album software. Our daughter-in-law advised us to start indexing and setting them up in some form of software albumn right from the start so it doesn't ever become a huge task down the track. That makes a lot of sense to us so that will be our next task. It will have to be, we are taking plenty of photos with this beaut little camera and we intend to take many thousands more!

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