[Kylan's Blog] New Camera

In anticipation for all of the photo opportunities that a wedding and a honeymoon are bound to present, Kristen and I purchased a new camera. It's a Sony DSC-H50, featuring 9.1 megapixels and 15x optical zoom. It was hard to decide between the Sony and a comparable Canon model, especially since I enjoyed my old Canon so much, but the Sony had a few features that made it seem like a better camera.

In particular, I really liked the sports modes available on the DSC-H50. The shutter speed is excellent, and the minimum time between pictures is a lot smaller than any DSLR-like camera that Canon has on the market. There is a "shoot continuously" option that allows you to take consecutive pictures only 1/3 second apart from each other.

Another cool feature is the SmileShutter capability. In this mode, the user presses and releases the shutter button, but the camera only takes a picture once it detects that the subject in the frame is smiling. This could be really nice when photographing camera-shy children. So far, it seems to work really well.

We bought this camera at Circuit City, and we were extremely pleased with the customer service we received. Earlier in the day, we tried going to a shop called "Camera Corner" because we thought that the staff there would be more knowledgeable about cameras. Instead, they turned out to be snobs and were completely rude to us. When asked to compare two different models, the attendant simply shrugged her shoulders. "Apple and oranges," she said. She refused to give us any help on how to pick out a camera. We would have been more than happy to give her our money if only she had been nicer. There's another company to add to my Customer Service Blacklist.