New Camera

The wife and I have been waiting for Black Friday for about six months since our decent camera crapped out.  We have a back up digital camera, which we've been using, but with only 3x optical zoom, it leaves much to be desired.

So this Black Friday, my wife's goal was to snag us a camera.  She's been watching the ads since the beginning of November and had found us a couple of good ones.  Her wish list included:

• quick "reflexes" (not sure the technical term for it is, but she wanted to be able to take a bunch of pictures in a row without the long lag time between pictures that our current camera had)
• "steady" feature (again, not too technically savvy, but basically, she is quite shaky and her pictures can be affected by this)
• decent optical zoom
• a slender/sleek camera
• not too heavy on the pocket book

We decided that we would look for a bit higher quality than the $150 3-5x optical zoom point-and-shoot cameras that were prevelant in the ads, but not quite as hefty as a nice SLR camera.

After a trip to the BestBuy, we decided to go with the Nikon Coolpix P90.  The features we liked were:

• 24x optical, wide-angle zoom (26-624mm)
• 12.1 megapixels (which was more than we needed, but we weren't going to hold it against the camera)
• A nice 3" LCD display screen and electronic viewfinder.  The screen also "disengages" from the body of the camera and swivels 90 degrees for low and high angle shots.  Not yet sure how practical that feature will be, but again, it didn't count against the camera
• Image Stabilization (yeah, I found the term on the website, and no, I'm not going back up there to change up the jargon.  That's how I roll).  A big plus.
  
• Continuous sports shot mode allows us to shot 15 frames-per-second for up to 45 seconds.  This feature appeals to me, as I've always wanted to get a frame by frame capture of my golf swing.  Might also be a fun feature to play with when we take the pup to the lake.
• P, S, A, & M modes allow more control with the settings of the camera.  I can't wait to goof around with the shutter and aperture settings and figure out how to take professional looking photographs. 
  

Once we decided that this is the camera for us, the wife planned out the Black Friday strategy.  But, as luck would have it, while she was showing her family the camera the day before, she saw that the online store had the camera for the same price it would be on Black Friday.  So she ordered it up, and was able to sleep in a bit the next day.  Score!!!

I can't wait to fiddle around with the features on the camera.  It is my goal to become proficient enough with this higher level point-and-shoot camera to justify upgrading to an SLR.

Pictures to follow once I figure the camera out.