Trying out the new compact digital camera, a Sony DSC-P200, in Suffolk over May bank holiday 2005...
Tractor stand-off under arches - show down with tractor under overgrown arches in a back lane at Snape Maltings.
Eroded brick wall at Snape Maltings.
Tim Hunkin's water clock on the pier at Southwold - underexposed against the sky. (Hunkin is best known in the UK for his Secret Life of Machines tv series. More on the clock here.)
Water-worn groyne one (with macro), two, three and four - Southwold beach, Suffolk; taken by Wendy.
Reclaimed Volvo - Over-grown Volvo, farm in Westhall.
Original shots taken at 3 megapixel resolution (1.3MB file size on average), and resaved at medium jpeg quality, after having been reduced in size (except the brick wall shot).
The Sony looks great, and feels fairly handleable in these lumpen meathooks. It's very fast to power-up, focus and shoot (huge shutter lag having been a particular disappointment with previous compact digitals). Shots generally look excellent, and the auto-focus is pretty good at working out that we want to focus on this thing in the foreground, rather than than that landscape in the background. Well-designed interface. Memory-stick into the Vaio makes for super-easy integration, and it's convenient to be able to plug the charger into the camera, rather than having to place the battery in a charging cradle (though that charger is large). Highly recommended, but based on only a few hours' point-and-shoot use so far.
This in comparison to the faithful 4+ year-old Pentax Optio 330, which, as you'd expect, cost twice as much for half the quality. Optio served and travelled well until March when it was lifted from a coffee shop table in Madrid by a thief who sadly doesn't use Flickr. Otherwise we might still be able to see the pictures of Madrid's ornate man-hole covers, loads of beautiful shops signs, compelling Easter religious ceremonies and Velazquez paintings its mystic imaging pad had been filled with.
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