Guess who finally owns a decent digital camera?
That's right, motherfuckers, it's me! It's a Nikon Coolpix S550, to be specific, my main Christmas gift from my parents this year, announced to me early so that I could actually go out and help pick it out, out of the one gajillion digital cameras that now exist. Believe it or not, this is actually the first decent digital camera I've ever owned in my life, so needless to say I'm thrilled. Unfortunately, right now I'm still down at my parents' house in suburban St. Louis, so there's not exactly anything interesting around to shoot; but believe me when I say that I will soon be pumping out a whole plethora of digital images up in Chicago, which will hopefully be the final motivation I need to start updating this blog on a regular basis again. Anyway, thought I'd at least get one quick shot up on the first day of ownership, just because I'm so excited about it and wanted to announce it all.
For those who are curious, in its top mode the S550 takes photos at a stunning ten megapixels in quality; that's enough to print out an image at 16 by 20 inches without any loss of detail. It also has an unbelievably good nighttime mode (again, more on this when I get back to Chicago); an insane amount of semi-manual and fully manual settings; an ISO (film speed) range of 64 to 2000; a 5X optical zoom (that is, a zoom actually in the physical lens), with a digital zoom that can bump that up to 20X (i.e. the camera artificially blows up the pixels at that point); image stabilization; the ability to shoot stunning full-motion, full-sound, low-light 640 x 480 videos (AVI/Quicktime format); and even a focus mode that can automatically detect if a human face is in the picture, and will set the focal length to them automatically even if they're not in the center of the frame. And all this for under $200, and in a case that's smaller than my freaking cellphone. UNBELIEVABLE.
Anyway, like I said, officially one million more photographs coming when I get back to Chicago; for now, though, I at least wanted to make a mention of it, just because I'm so excited.
For those who are curious, in its top mode the S550 takes photos at a stunning ten megapixels in quality; that's enough to print out an image at 16 by 20 inches without any loss of detail. It also has an unbelievably good nighttime mode (again, more on this when I get back to Chicago); an insane amount of semi-manual and fully manual settings; an ISO (film speed) range of 64 to 2000; a 5X optical zoom (that is, a zoom actually in the physical lens), with a digital zoom that can bump that up to 20X (i.e. the camera artificially blows up the pixels at that point); image stabilization; the ability to shoot stunning full-motion, full-sound, low-light 640 x 480 videos (AVI/Quicktime format); and even a focus mode that can automatically detect if a human face is in the picture, and will set the focal length to them automatically even if they're not in the center of the frame. And all this for under $200, and in a case that's smaller than my freaking cellphone. UNBELIEVABLE.
Anyway, like I said, officially one million more photographs coming when I get back to Chicago; for now, though, I at least wanted to make a mention of it, just because I'm so excited.
