My beloved Canon S50 has not been doing that well. It takes pretty good pictures, but it’s been dropped and whacked a few too many times (my fault) and has been in the shop twice for a problem which just now recurred, here in Washington at XML2004. Over at DPR, they’ve reviewed two generations of S50 successor (S60 and S70, how imaginative), all very positively, and a close reading reveals that the things Canon had changed are exactly the ones that had been irritating in the S50. So rather than fixing the S50, I escaped the conference for a bit—ah, balmy sunny DC autumn day—and got an S70. Lighter, stronger, thinner, better lens, can re-use the old flashcard and battery so now I have two. Very nice. Plus, prices haven’t adjusted in Canada to the recent steep climb in our dollar, so I probably saved $50 or better by buying down here, even after I pay the sales tax at the border. By way of eulogy for the S50, here are three recent nature abstracts; evidence that a little wee pocket camera, when the photographer gets lucky, can hold its head up unashamed in the company of titanic cameras three times its size and ten times its price.
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Obviously, all heavily PhotoShopped.
