The first digital camera I bought was an Olympus. I can’t remember why I chose that particular camera, but I suppose it was because it had good, balanced reviews. As I upgraded numerous times, I handed this camera down to my parents so they could use it. It seemed to serve them well, although they didn’t use it too much due to their technophobia. But recently, it finally broke down by turning off whenever a focus attempt (and thus a taking-picture attempt) was taken.

So I shopped around for a new camera to replace it, the primary motivation was something simple and with a large LCD for my parents; but it would also be nice to have a compact camera for the instances where one would be useful. I eventually settled on a Canon A570 IS, mostly because I found an amazing deal for it — $180 new in retail box, when most places were selling it for $225 to $250. Although it turns out that major retailers were just suffering latency in their response to the Canadian dollar, and camera prices have since started falling like rocks dropped from clouds.

I had been looking for an A-series myself because it had manual controls (Av primarily). The IS was a bonus, and would be helpful when I go to concerts. Although at the Go! Team concert, there was someone behind me (non-press) with a Nikon dSLR, so I suppose I could’ve brought mine.

With this purchase, I have bought cameras from 5 of the 7 major brands: Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus, and Konica-Minolta (now Sony). The only ones I’m missing are Fuji and Casio. I suspect I may get a Fuji in the future because their compacts have larger sensors and so have less noise in low light. And the Casio Exlims are attractive because well they’re so thin (although their IQ is supposed to be terrible).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: photography, techlust