In anticipation of a family trip to Yellowstone next year, I wanted to upgrade my camera. I bought my Olympus C2040-Z in late 2001, and while it’s good, I’ve been finding myself without it a lot — it’s too big to carry all the time. I wanted a camera that would always be with me (pocket-sized), that had manual focus (for those tough to shoot subjects, like spider webs), had an optical viewfinder (so the LCD isn’t mandatory), and was a fast and friendly operator. There were a bunch of other things I was interested in, but those were the big ones.
No camera made right now fits the bill perfectly. Canon, one of the runners-up, makes some fine cameras that are small and have good image quality (I was interested in the Powershot A540), but they don’t have manual focus. I ended up deciding that the right camera for me was the Casio EX-Z850. It has everything I wanted in a small package. There are many, many reviews of it out there of varying opinions. My favorite opinion comes from Ken Rockwell, who basically says your camera doesn’t matter, just to get one and go take pictures. It’s a little glib, but I think it’s true.
Digital cameras are computers that take pictures, and as computers do, they improve over time. My trusted is five years old now, which is ancient in computer years. It is a 2-megapixel camera, which is fine for many things, but gives you little leeway for cropping. It has a movie mode, but the movies are 320x240 (small), do not include sound, and cannot be longer than 15 seconds; all in all, not very useful. Casio cameras are known to take very good quality video as well as still pictures, so that was influential in my decision.
I haven’t had the camera very long, and I haven’t been on any long shooting walks yet (it’s winter and not conducive to being outside leisurely). However, as a person with background in user interface design, I am keen to talk about the experience of using the camera. This is ground that Ken Rockwell covers to a degree in his expansive review of the 850’s predecessor, the Z750, a very popular camera (see also Mike Davidson’s post on it) that’s a lot harder to find right now than the Z850. Any review will tell you about the great features this camera offers. I’ll just highlight some specifics that have stuck out to me so far.
Carly, the queen of fiendish and cute canines, is a handful. She has a lot of quirks, things that bother her. Dealing with her dealing with these things is an ongoing project.
Having recently drunk deeply of the Dog Whisperer Kool-Aid, we’re very conscious lately about what we’re doing to enforce our positions as the leaders of our little pack. The central idea is that Carly won’t be able to relax until she really believes that we have things under control. A lot of her weirdness is probably due to her believing that things are dangerous, and that she needs to take charge. I don’t think this is something of which we’ll completely break her, but progress has been made.
Lately, we’re been thinking about how the dog charges the door. When the doorbell rings, as anyone who has visited us probably knows, she charges the door and barks. What with the mail, and UPS and FedEx, this happens at least twice a day, usually three or more. Carly also rushes the door when I go out to pick up the mail, although she doesn’t bark, just waits there and goes running like hell back to her toys when I come back.
Today I tried something the dog whisperer does, making the dog lie down or roll over when something they hate is nearby. So when FedEx was here, I rolled her over and made her stay there. She was kind of resistent, really wanting to be up and alert, but she did it eventually. Then when I went out to get the mail later, she actually stayed sitting where I told her to, didn’t rush the door, didn’t move until I let her go. It was amazing.
This is the first time I’ve had a dog of my own, and the whole business of training her, figuring out as much as I can how her mind works, is very interesting. Even if she is a little freak.
Of course, now she’s all curled up on the couch making all this story seem like a bunch of hooey.