As previously mentioned, I just got a Canon Powershot SD 1000 / Digital Ixus 70 to replace my A400, which, while functional, is succumbing to age and wear. (Mostly it’s because of cracks in the casing from the night Fr. Nebres borrowed it to take a look at his photo, then handed it back to me, at which point my slippery fingers lost their grip and dropped it to the hard marble floor. Ever since then the A400 has been occasionally switching between camera and playback modes spontaneously, and the power and shutter buttons have not always worked consistently.)

Photos I’ve taken so far with the SD1000 have been acceptably clear and vibrant. The camera body is lighter and much less clumsy in the hand than I expected of such a square-cornered model, and the user interface is much quicker and more responsive than on the older A400 — with a 2.5″ LCD which is more than large enough for my needs. Probably my only gripe about the UI is that it now hides Stitch Assist mode deep in the Setup Menu, whereas on the A400 it was more quickly accessible from the Function Menu. I do take a lot of panoramic stitches, so that’s going to be a bit of a pain.

My first photo taken with the SD 1000 was a macro shot of — whom else — Pandora the Cat. Unfortunately, I had not mastered the art of remembering to turn off the flash, so it went off right in her face. It’s a good thing her eyes were shut at that moment — and her tongue was out:

Subsequent photos of my wife and myself turned out okay, though a bit dark in auto-ISO mode with backlighting:

And I also amused myself with the long-exposure feature by trying my hand at some crude light-drawing:

The face approximates how I feel about the camera.