My new camera arrived today! It’s soooo much fun! Some of you may remember my excitement when I bought my previous camera, a Fuji FinePix A210. That was a good little camera – only 3.2Mp but produced some pretty good results. But the S5600 is quite a large step up from that. It looks more professional, it feels more professional, and parts of the manual still confuse me!! I’ve been taking some pictures of random things in the lounge, testing it out, and I’ve got some interesting results. Despite the general lack of ambient light the camera managed to focus on pretty much anything, which was quite impressive. When viewed on the computer at 100%, some of them were a little grainy, but that’s to be expected with using high ISO settings. I’m looking forward to using this in good weather outside, I should be able to get some really impressive photos! The 10x zoom is very useful too – I can see our bird table quite clearly with it! The flash is pretty impressive too; I went out into the garage to take a picture of Neddy’s dashboard and got a really clear picture, despite it being very dark in there. The camera has an AutoFocus Light, which is basically a little green light on the front which temporarily lights up the scene so that the camera can focus on something, which means the camera can focus even in the dark! Ellie’s coming round this evening, so I’m going to try and get some nice photos of her (we still don’t have a nice picture of us together…. must put that right!!).

In other news, I’m on the lookout for a new mobile phone. Yes, I know I’ve just bought a new camera, but my current phone’s display is playing up a little. Every now and then I’ll open it up (it’s a flip phone) and the screen won’t show anything. I thought it might have been a loose connection, but if I switch it off and on again it’s all fine, so it must be something else. I’ve been doing a little research and found a phone I rather like the look of. It’s the Motorola L6, which is a cousin of the very stylish RAZR and SLVR phones. It’s got a camera in it too, which would be nice. Yes, I know I’ve just bought a camera, that’s not the point. How many times do you see something and think “Oh, if only I had brought my camera!” Now think how many times you walk out the door without your phone. There are bound to be loads of times when it would be useful to have a camera phone. I wouldn’t want to use it to take wedding photos or anything serious, but for taking photos of people at a party or of the ridiculous 12 inch exhaust that someone has bolted to their car, I reckon a camera phone is just the sort of thing we all need to hand at a moment’s notice. I’ve just got to persuade myself I can afford it…