I broke down and got a Canon A710 IS and, like the reviewers say, it doesn’t weigh much, it didn’t cost much, it has a great big zoom and seems to take OK pictures. There’s nothing very inspiring about it and I would probably have been willing to pay twice as much for something with RAW and more interesting glass and so on, but apparently the camera biz has walked away from the high-end compact.
Anyhow, that’s the Canon on yesterday’s flowers, and here are some travel shots.
Tree reflected on rainy sidewalk on Sun’s Menlo Park campus.
Yes, what follows is yet another photo of San Francisco from the air. Do people ever give me the weirdest looks when I start snapping shots out the window. Hey, I got a not-bad view of Vancouver on the way down.
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I guess the camera will do. But gosh, I loved that Canon S70.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Paul Morriss (Mar 21 2007, at 04:24)
I'm been looking at the A5xx range, but I'm pursuaded by your recommendation to stretch to the A7xx range. Now the question is, do I sell my lovely old SLR to fund it, or save a bit more? (You don't have to answer that.)
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From: Matt Ryall (Mar 21 2007, at 15:11)
Personally, I love taking photos out the plane window as well.
On my flight across the Rockies last month, I started snapping with my Canon compact, and soon enough the guy behind me had pulled out his DSLR and was taking some too.
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From: Chris Rijk (Mar 21 2007, at 16:21)
I think the A710 is one of the better options in that section of the market today.
However, if you can wait until about May, Sigma hope to be shipping their DP1 camera by then: http://sigma-dp1.com/
No official word on price yet, but I figure about half the price of its "big brother" (the SD14 DSLR with the same sensor), or around $800. The size of the sensor is about 12x that of the one in the A710 (probably costs 50x to manufacture). Maybe not the most interesting seeming lens on it but it looks like they were aiming for optical quality (ie won't limit the sensor's resolution) rather than features.
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From: suthsc (Mar 27 2007, at 19:59)
I REALLY like the reflection picture. I was thinking that it was a filter of some sort when I first saw it, but when I saw the description the lines in the pavement stood out. Quite a shot, regardless of the camera.
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