Also on the ski trip, on the second day, I broke my camera. After taking this picture featuring mike climbing up a ridge after taking a pretty impressive fall. Even those of us who didn’t fall still had a climb, that powder stuff really slows you down. Sadly I forgot to use the snow setting for this shot.
Anyways. After taking that maybe I didn’t turn the camera off properly and the lens didn’t retract. Or I did and I somehow turned it back on while it was in my pocket. But the next time I took it out to take a picture, the lens was already extended, and some of the teeth on the gears that let it focus and zoom appeared to be broken. That seems like something that might be fixable, but who knows if that would cost less than the price of the camera new, which is ~$110 apparently.
I’ve got some mild issues with the camera, which is a Cannon A560, so I’m not sure I’d replace it with the same thing. The things I’d like in a new camera are:
- Faster flash/picture taking: I often find that I miss things because once I hold down the shutter button it takes too long to capture the image. I’m not taking motion blur, I’m talking delay. It is only exacerbated when the flash is on. New batteries help, but if I have to use brand new batteries all the time then it’s really a battery life issue.
- More optical zoom: 4x is just not enough. I like to take high resolution pictures of landscapes for my panoramas, and more zoom, combined with more pictures make better results.
- Better night photos: many of my shots occur at night, and this camera kind of sucks at it. First, I almost never want the flash on for them. The flash ruins the colors. There are so many vibrant colors in the city at night; I want a more sensitive CCD to pick them up. Also, I want a lot more leeway in how still I have to hold the darn thing.
I haven’t done a lot of research yet, but I think that those requirements push me into the expensive SLR world. This is especially true of the last one. However, whatever I get still needs to fit into a cargo pocket, which pretty much eliminates the SLR world. I mean cargo pockets are big, but they aren’t that big. I suppose all I really want is an improvement in each category, not the best I can get in each category. Maybe I can find that, but I’m not sure how to quantify some of those into a comparable number, of where to find numbers for the ones that can be quantified.
Finally, time to write about the ski trip. Here is the quick story I’ve already told pretty much everyone:
Some extra tidbits and details:
Tonight I played 
These past two weeks at work have been a re-introduction to ECE 320: Electronic Devices and Controls. I have to do something that is very simple conceptually, but continually reminds me why I am not a hardware guy with how complex it actually is.