Recovery and New Camera Day

After yet one more nap this afternoon, I finally feel like I beat this cold. I was coming down with it Wednesday and missed work on Thursday and Friday. I felt pretty lousy on Saturday as well. Sunday was better, but I have been hacking like a sea lion since the middle of last night. My wife has really been appreciating my performances, I am sure.

The exciting news is that today is New Camera Day. I've been carrying around a little Olympus Stylus, which I love because it's small, takes reasonably good pictures and it's tough: shock-proof, waterproof and cold-resitant, which I need because I generally carry my camera in a cell phone holster on my messeger bag whenever I ride.

The new camera is a Nikon P500. I got a demo of a P100 from a friend on the recent Flood Ride and was so impressed with the camera that I wanted one, so I treated myself to an early birthday present on Saturday. The Nikon P100 or P500 are small digital cameras with mega-zoom capability and good optics. It's not an SLR, which I refuse to use because I don't want the hassle, but I miss having a good zoom everytime I want to take a picture of a bird or something.

The Nikon operating system is different than the Olympus I am used to using, so I've got some book learning to do, but I took this out this morning for a short bird walk around Lake Calharriet and Lakewood Cemetery and it was great. It seems to do really well in low light; much better than my Olympus, which gets grainy in low light, and the flash is a lot more forgiving as well - it doesn't wash out the color and make everyone in the photo look like vampires, at least on the preview screeen.

That said, this camera is considerablly larger than my Olypus Stylus, so I'll have to relearn how to carry a camera. Have no fear, the trusty Olypus is still on my messenger bag - the convenience of that is just too great to give up.

Still, the added capability of this unit will more than make up for the inconvenience, I suspect.