I remembered a camera this time!

Lookie! I finally remembered to take the camera on a road trip! OK, so it was just an overnight trip out to the coast, but still!

Actually, I've been digital camera shopping. Unfortunately, I'm far pickier than my budget allows and really want an optical through-the-lens viewfinder. Much to my dismay, that feature eliminates the vast majority of affordable digital cameras out there and leaves mostly just the pro-grade SLRs. Fortunately, my friend Jim loaned me his Canon EOS Digital Rebel (!!!) for a few days so I could give it a test drive. These pics are my first attempts with it. I was playing with all the various program settings, so the results were a bit inconsistent quality-wise, but I'm getting a feel for it.

The jury is still out on the camera. It's a very nice digital SLR. Lots of features, full manual to a plethora of full auto modes. Lots 'o brains.

Hey ... my primary camera up until now has been a Pentax K1000, so none 'o yo lip! I got it when I was fifteen and it still works perfectly.

The 15-55mm lens is good enough. I think its range is too narrow to be very useful as a zoom lens, though. The wide is not wide enough and the zoom is not enough longer than a normal lens to be worthwhile. I found it to be only slightly better than a fixed-length lens and a bit distracting. I would probably take better pictures without the distraction. I don't care much for the built-in flash. Not because it's weak, I could care less about that, but because it is difficult to control when the flash is enabled. Several times I went to snap a shot and had the flash pop up unexpectedly (and unwanted). On a couple of other occasions when I wanted it to use the flash for some foreground fill, it wouldn't pop up no matter what I did - preventing the camera from shooting at all. Which leads me to my second dislike - the camera thinks it's smarter than I am. If it doesn't like the exposure, it won't shoot. Period. Grr. I missed several shots because it overrode me and didn't snap when I hit the button. Now, I'll be the first to say that I have not learned all the modes yet, so this may not be a problem if I have the right mode selected. But Al also needs to be able to use the camera and if I can't make it behave even after reading the manual, there's no way she'll want to use it.

Hmm ... .I'm noticing my "dislike" list is longer than my "like" list. That's not really a fair comparison, though. It really is an excellent camera. Likely some of my dislikes will go away as I figure out the subtleties of the various modes. Is it worth the price? I'm not sure yet. Stay tuned ... more pics and more feedback coming as soon as my Flickr quota resets.