A New Eye for the Blog

When my home was broken into back in December, one of the things that made me the most mad was that they stole my camera. I really liked it, and even though you could drop it in a shirt pocket, it took great photos. A short while ago, we got a check from our insurance to replace the stuff that was stolen. Hurray!

I eventually made my way to Best Buy because this isn't something I can buy online without seeing it in person. I narrowed it down to three choices and checked them out on Snapsort.com (which is a great tool for research!) and landed on the Sony DSC-HX50V.

Also, FYI, the price in store was $70 MORE than their online price! Good thing I scoped that out first because they will price match not only their own prices (which seems kinda shady to me!) but other online retailers. Do your homework!

One of the biggest factors for me when choosing a camera is optical zoom. Digital zoom is useless and don't let anyone tell you otherwise! This one's got a 30x optical zoom, are you ready for your close up?

It's got some other neat-o bells and whistles that will be fun to explore. This is my first camera with built-in wifi. What does that mean? For starters, I can transfer pics from the camera to my PC without having to physically connect them. At least, in theory. If you want an exercise in frustration, try entering a 16 character password with upper case, lower case, numbers and special characters without a keyboard! I can also send pics to my phone or tablet. That will be cool on vacation! There's a phone app which allows you to use your phone as a remote for the camera. Obviously, you can't turn the camera remotely but it will let you adjust the zoom and take the shot without being behind the camera. And it has GPS just in case I forget exactly where I took a photo.

I'm pretty excited about the fact that it can use an external flash too. I don't have one yet but maybe someday. If it's one thing I've disliked with my digital cameras it's that using the flash usually blows out the image or sometimes you're just that little bit too far away for the built-in to do what you need.



The pick was all about function over form. I'm not in love with all the dials and buttons. I'd much rather have a touch screen because in my experience all that extra stuff can mean you hit something you didn't intend when trying to snap that pic. But I do appreciate the thumb rest to the left of the movie button which is textured to give a better grip.

I haven't used it a whole lot yet, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. It sounds weird to say I wanted to introduce you to it, but my camera is such an integral part of most everything that goes on here I thought you should meet.