New Camera... Sony DSC HX9

Jody had a minor accident with our camera, an Olympus Stylus 1010, while we were on our trip to Oregon. It is a decent point and shoot camera that takes good outside pictures, but average indoor pictures. She dropped it in Wyoming and what do you know the camera broke enough that it still took pictures, but became annoying to use. I actually put a band-aid on it so that it would keep working during the trip. We've had this camera for over 4 years now, so for a digital point and shoot camera that is a pretty good life span. (Don't get me started on how crappy things are made these days.)

While we were in Oregon we talked about getting a new one (due to the 0% sales tax), but I'm picky about what technology products I buy and I have to read about them before I go to the store and pick one out. So I found the Nikon 9100 and the Sony DSC-HX9 and both seemed to be reasonably good cameras for what I want/need to do. I take lots of inside and outside pictures and wanted something that did well with both, with minimal fuss.

So I went to two Best Buys in my area and neither store had them in stock, but they both offered to order me one and ship it to my house. I figured I could do that on my own, so I went price shopping online. Neither camera is discounted at this time, and then I remembered I got some discounts through work. I found that I could get the Sony for a good price though that service, so I decided that was the one I would get. The camera is a 16Mpix and has a 16x optical zoom, which having a good zoom is something I wanted. It also does a lot of other things and so I'll have to learn how to use those. The sweep panorama feature seems pretty cool and wish I would have had it when I was at Crater Lake.

After I got it (which took 3 days from Sony Direct, which is great) I took some sample pictures out in the yard.

Rose in the yard, no manual mode select just get close and it switches to macro mode automatically.

Stormy, taken in "pet" mode, she is wondering if she gets a treat for allowing me to take her picture.

An 8-point buck in our backyard that happened to show up the other morning. He is about 1000 yards or more from the house and if you make the picture full size by clicking on it you can seem him quite clearly.

The Sony is a little bigger than the Olympus physically, and the one thing I liked about the Olympus is that I could put it in my pocket and go. We'll see if the Sony is as "pocketable".