New Camera

ah, i love new toys! i just got this sent to me today: http://store.kodak.com/store/ekconsus....169236500 . you may remember the last time i posted about buying a new camera. it was my little kodak z885, 5x optical zoom and 8 megapixels. this new puppy is 26x optical!!! and 14 megapixel!!! or as mike meiers of saturday live skit fame might say, 'i'm as happy as a little girl!'

this is not a DSLR. it's more of a near-slr. there are no detachable lenses and such. but, at 26x optical, that's like having a telephoto lens of 676mm, which is pretty sweet. i take a lot of shots outdoors so wildlife shots shld be a lot better now that i can zoom in and not scare everything away.

it's quite a bit bigger than my last one but i'm still going to try and wear it on my belt. it has a built in flash, shoots in RAW, has a lens cap, can shoot something like 1080 x 720 video and lots of auto and manual function buttons, which i like. i've only tried it out a tiny bit so far but i'm liking what i've seen so far. i'll try and post a comparison shot of a cat i took at no zoom and the same cat at 26x. you'll get the idea real quickly how sweet this really is from two shots

oh, and for the price ($329 u.s.) this thing has a ton of bang for the buck.

more later

here are two pictures that demonstate the 26x optical zoom of this camera. the first is one not zoomed in at all.

nice camera, checked out the spec ~~~~~ 80 min VGA video as well, face detection and all the mod-cons

I carry a mono pod which collapses to about 50cm which makes it easy to carry and once you get use to it works nicely