I’ve been generally disappointed with the Sony Cybershot lately. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good point and shoot digital camera and has served me well, but, I want to have more control of the picture process and this trip to Alishan has really driven it home for me.
Today I went and bought a new camera.
I won’t go into the details or merits, but it’s a pretty nice prosumer level camera. At this exact moment in time, for the money, it’s difficult to find a better digital camera. It’s a Canon 350D (Rebel XT in the US) and takes enormous 8 megapixel pictures, up considerably from the 3 megapixels that the Sony took. It has a complete automatic mode, but also has full manual control. It’s going to take me a while to figure out how to use the manual controls again.
I wanted to get it today because we’re going on another trip Monday and I need a bit of time to practice.
The bad news was, the camera shop was missing one of the pieces, so when we went out to buy it I came back with a firm price, a committment to buy and no camera. They had the part brought in from elsewhere and promised to call before the day was over so we could come pick it up.
We took a ride to the RT Mart, which Irene and I had never been to before. It’s more than a bit like Walmart Supercenters; a decidedly American-style combination of everything and a grocery store. I don’t know why, but I was really glad to see how crowded the store was. I could never figure out why American retailing practices hadn’t caught on here.
I wish we’d been to this place a long time ago, it’s just up the road from a nearby subway station, we could go there practically anytime we want.
Of course, while we were there, the camera place called to say everything was ready, but we had cold items that needed to be taken home first, and then James needed feeding and putting to bed.
Finally, a couple hours later we managed to go get the camera, just in time for a trip to the night market! We brought the camera home to put it on the charger for a bit and get ready to go and when the time came to leave, it started raining.
I wasn’t about to take the camera out in the rain, so… no pictures, except for this picture of Michelle, the first I took with the camera.
