Here be shutterbugs...

Megan and I went camping with her family over the weekend, and it was a great opportunity to break in our BRAND NEW DIGITAL CAMERA!

I'm sure everyone else there other than Megan and me LOVED stopping every couple of yards to go "Ooo! Let's try to take a photo of THAT!"

But our experimentation paid off. We figured out a lot about working with our camera, including how to get the time-lapse shot above. Unfortunately without a tripod, most of my attempts at those cheesy water-flow time-lapse shots didn't work, because I was trying to put the camera against a rock or something near by to stabilize it. I had to throw out a lot of shots that just didn't come out okay.

I'm especially happy to have a camera with such a nice visual range. The wide angles are fun, and I've never really played with wider angles on a decent camera, so I tried some stuff like that tree.

I feel like I've got some work/practice to do before I get some of those snazzy shots Cat always seems to find, but if the zillion photos I took this weekend are any indication, I'll have some time to practice.

One of my favorite features is the image stabilizer, which I'm told is supposed to help a shaky camera in low light or zoomed in really far. We were playing cards the first night I was out there (Megan and kin headed out Thursday, so us working blokes had to catch up later), and trying out the camera between turns. I really like how this one of Megan turned out, even though her hands are flaying about a bit. I just like the motion in the background with her still face. Not a shot I'd be able to do with my old manual SLR methinks.

I narrowed down the collection of photos from the trip to a digestible 16 photos, which can be found at my Picasa page.