Bought a new camera yesterday. As you might guess, this is HUGE for me. Huge. First, I'm broke. Second, I lurve my tiny Canon Elph, whose photos you've been seeing for years now. But it was breathing its last, and I can't be without a camera. Like, not for a minute. So I beelined for the Canon counter at B&H, spent 20 minutes with a salesman named Fred who, like all the camera salesmen, is a photographer himself and uses the brand of camera they have him selling. I ended up with a camera a little bigger than the one I had, which is the downside, and a little more expensive than I'd planned, which is always a downside. Especially for me, especially now. But I love this device. BUT: I screwed up some setting this morning, messing with it, and I could not fix it! Could not! Thought maybe the camera was a lemon. Spent five minutes with the manual, got high blood pressure, decided I would pack up all the original packaging in case it WAS a lemon and run back up to Fred.

Could he fix it? He could, he did, and he didn't even laugh at me, though he had a right to because what I'd done -- yes, it was me, not the camera -- was kind of dumb. Put me in mind of one of my nephews, many years ago, reminding someone that "Computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do." I had told the camera wrong, that's all. So now it's fixed and it's fabulous! How fabulous? Like this:


morning street

which on account of the optical zoom, which I love almost as much as I do Fred, gives you this detail:



Thanks, Fred!