New Toy!

I did it. I bought a new digital camera. I couldn't help myself, it's in my blood. My mom is a professional photographer after all! For the last few years I've been using my Olympus 2 megapixel camera and it's been doing a decent job, but it didn't have all of the options I wanted, it sometimes took unclear pictures, the resolution was relatively low for large prints, and it didn't do video. I've been wanting to take more pictures and try doing some artistic digital manipulation, but the pictures from my old camera just couldn't cut it. My other camera was also bulky so I couldn't just stick in a pocket and go. This has all changed as I just bought the beauty you see below--the Canon SD400.

I'm not going to try to sell you on this camera, but from the reviews I've read and from the playing around I've done with the display models at both Staples and Best Buy, this is a pretty fine camera, especially for being so damn tiny! This thing is absolutely teenie in comparison to my old camera and my mom's SLR digital. It's about the size of a deck of cards, but it has more features than most camera's twice its size (and price).

It does video with sound, which will be really nice. It's 5 megapixels so I can make big prints. It has a plethora of manual settings so I can actually customize how the pictures will look instead of hoping my camera takes a decent looking pic of what I'm pointing it at. It's sturdy and made of metal components so it doesn't feel like I'll break it by putting it in my pocket. It has just about everything I could want and it comes in a tiny package!

There are a few small drawbacks. I've heard the LCD is a little more fragile than those found in some other cameras, so I'll have to be kind of careful with that. It only came with a 16 meg memory card which will only hold like 8-9 pictures when you are taking them at the highest resolution and sensitivity. This wasn't a real problem, though, since I bought it at Staples this week and they are giving out free 256 mb cards with this model (and I used a 12% off coupon for even more savings). I might look into getting a 1 gb card so I can take longer movies, but that all depends on how often I'll want to do movies.

I'm anxious to play around with this little guy and see what he can do. If anyone else has used this model, let me know what you think. Also, if you're looking for a cheap 2 megapixel camera with a gigantic memory card, let me know. I'm looking to get rid of mine and would rather not go through ebay.