I think I mentioned a few weeks I wanted a new camera. Well, yesterday I ordered one and today it arrived. In some ways it's very similar to my old, which is a Canon Powershot G3, universally acclaimed, in its time, and for many years after, as the 'prosumer' camera.
For years, people lamented that the subsequent models didn't have the wonderful swivel screen of the G3, and I knew that, having used a swivel screen, I could never go back to a fixed screen. Just before Christmas, my brother mentioned he'd got a G11 and it has a swivel screen; just after Christmas, the zoom button finally seized up on the G3, as it had been threatening to do for several weeks. So, perfect serendipity.
Of course, when it arrived, I realised that not only was the battery different from the old one (but, at least, one was included) but it's a totally different memory card. That did annoy me, because I bought an 8 GB one at Gatwick just last September, and have now gone out and bought a 16GB. By the time I've bought a spare battery, a soft case and a remote switch, that's adding on £150 to the original price, all of which seems like redundant spend.
It took a bit of getting used to even doing basic stuff, although I was quite pleased that my hands have already started moving instinctively to certain buttons. I shall give it another couple of whirls in the next few days, taking photos that won't be irreplaceable. It seems smaller than the G3 although the main bodywork is pretty much the same size. But it doesn't have that Cyrano-type nose, or that annoying lens cap held on by a piece of string.
Anyway, I took some photos.
Jimmy, as usual being totally unphotogenic, but I almost like the way I framed this - in Franco Manca in Brixton market - that's my organic lemonade in the front
I took this, intending it to be an iconic shot of iconic Lambeth Town Hall - which I have never previously photographed from the outside - but rather than thinking these people and vehicles got in the way, decided they were more interesting than the clock tower.
After we got off the bus, we went to see Jimmy's sister-in-law Julie at New Park Fruiterers, so I took some pictures round the shop. These are my favourite:
For some reason, and this manifests itself most starkly in the red roses, the colour in the RAW file doesn't seem replicable in LightRoom - in the original they are more crimson, in this they look more scarlet
Update: I finally got round to downloading the newer version of Lightroom and with no additional processing, I get this
Amazing!
