walking around the house, snapping things before i've actually read through the manual...

Since I had some money from Christmas & my birthday, I broke down and replaced my digital camera, I'm preparing the old one to sell on Ebay. I'd wanted a faster camera with higher resolution for awhile now, and had actually picked one out but when I went to check it out on Sony's website this week, it was already gone and had been replaced by a really bulky looking camera with only 5.1 mp as opposed to the 7.2 mp camera I had already picked out. (And an even bulkier 10.3 mp mega-camera that looks more like a camcorder for twice the price) The improvements were supposed to be a 'Super Steady Shot' image stabalizer and a 12x zoom.

Not wanting to buy old technology, I read through all the reviews and specs I could find for both cameras and decided I wanted my original pick instead of the 'new, improved' version. Then I went price-hunting and found that I could actually get two cameras for the price I had estimated for one, and ended up getting two of last year's models because I've always wanted a little camera to carry with me in my purse, and my cellphone camera sucks big time.

So, off to Amazon.com to spend my birthday money. Since I make my living taking photos of things to sell on Ebay, I felt I could justify buying a new camera, and it's a tax write off also. I picked a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-V3 for my all-purpose work camera, and got a little Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 (in red!) as my travel camera. My last camera (a Cyber-Shot DSC-S85) has been a fabulous camera, I love my Sony cameras, and they keep getting better each time. The menus and controls on all three cameras are pretty much the same (thank you Sony!), so I could actually pick up both of the new ones and play with them right out of the box. (Some test photos with the V3 are in the next entry) And both are a whopping 7.2 mb, though the zooms are only 4x and 3x.

All three cameras take the same memory sticks, and the two new cameras use the same battery. But most of my old accessories won't work with the new ones, so I'm going to have a really nice package of accessories to sell with the DSC-S85, batteries & charger, 3 closeup filters and more. With the new cameras I also bought - an extra battery, two more memory sticks (1 gb and 512 mb), a new memory stick reader for the heck of it, and new cases for each of them. When I received everything, though, I decided to use my old big leather case for the DSC-V3, the new case I bought for it was too cramped, though it fits my old camera perfectly so it's going with it. (Love the case for the smaller camera, though)

And when I got both cameras, I realized that neither came with a battery charger (just the AC adaptor), so I had to buy one of those also. Warning, the V3 didn't come with a memory stick, though the P200 came with a tiny one. After playing with the macro on the V3, I decided to get a closeup filter and adapter for photographing jewelry and tiny things. The DSC-S85 had a slightly better zoom than the newer ones. But they're both faster and both have the nice plus of having built-in lens covers. My cat will be disappointed, she had some sort of vendetta against my old lens cap and would bat it off my desk whenever I wasn't looking.

I've been reading over the manual for the V3 tonight, trying to tame the auto-focus for closeup pictures. It has infrared, holograms and all sorts of fancy things. Another reason I thought it was ultra-cool was it has a night mode for focusing in the dark and even taking photos in the dark (look ma, no flash!). The greenish picture of my cat in the test photos was in the night mode, she hates the flash so it should be fun to play with.

Now I have to go through the book for the small camera. No night mode but it's smaller than my cellphone, yippee!