My first point-and-shoot

There's a reason for the silence on my blog for the past week: the family had an extended weekend trip to Seoul, and we only just got back home to Tokyo. It was a good Seoul experience, but I must say that I never thought I'd be so glad to hear and speak Japanese again, as crap as my ability may be. We ate a lot of Korean food, and I have heaps of photos to sort through as well as getting back into the busy grind of daily life. I promise to share about our trip to Seoul soon, but in the meantime, here's a photo of my latest toy that arrived in the mail the day before our flight: a Canon SX210 IS. (Have I mentioned how much I like using Japanese Amazon? I usually receive my orders the next day.)

In a time when most photography enthusiasts are excited about upgrading to a dSLR, it must indeed seem strange that I'm excited about obtaining a point-and-shoot (aka "idiot camera" for its ease of use). I have solely used my Olympus dSLR for almost 5 years now, and I've resisted getting another more compact camera because I didn't want my Olympus to be an expensive toy bought on a whim and then put aside and never used. However since having Zak 18 months ago, I have often wished I had a compact camera that I could bring everywhere with me, so that I could capture those memorable but often spontaneous moments on both still and video mode. We also have a proper digital video camcorder which we've owned for almost 6 years, but like that dSLR, its bulk makes it difficult to bring out. Most mums of young children out there can sympathise with me because going out with Zak often means packing a suitcase worth of things, and lugging around a dSLR and digi-camcorder as well is not ideal at all. Hopefully this is where the tiny Canon SX210 IS will come in handy. I haven't had much chance to use it, but I already love the 14x zoom, HD video mode and the tiny size! It can also operate in manual function which is a plus. It's only recently been made available in overseas market so there aren't many internet reviews on the SX210 yet, but it's got my thumbs-up!