It was a really nice Christmas- part one up in London with
sleepsy_mouse' family having Christmas lunch in her sister's classy flat ( in the old Highbury stadium ) then back to spend yesterday at my parents' house.
Among many brilliant things, my family got me a new camera, a Canon Powershot S95. It's basically got most of the things they put in the kind of intermediate Powershot cameras -including lots of manual options - in a small compact style wrapper that I can still fit in my pocket and take with me on adventures.
Once I figure out how to use it I think I'll have a lot of fun with it.

Pip - notice there is even a hit of depth-of-field to this. Not a whole lot, but you can actually focus it manually, which is sweet.

A forest of baby pine trees in the snow, looking very festive.

Pip catching her ball. If I were smart I would have noticed that big cut-out corner and cropped it in a little, but apparently I'm not and I didn't.

Pip doing a little dance with the intention of catching her ball. She is very good at chasing balls, very good at catching them and very good at snargling and pouncing with them. However she has no concept of bringing them back, she carries them quite happily but the moment a different thought enters her head she drops the ball wherever she is and wanders off. We got her to bring it back once but it took about 20 minutes of constant coaxing for her to puzzle it out.

Small has his Christmas sprouts. I'm very impressed by the low-light performance of this camera- there was no natural light at all by this point and it has done a great job of brightening everything up.

Zorro huffs and watches for his dinner arriving. Again, the low-light performance is endlessly better than my previous camera.
I would have shared my pictures of the Houses Of Parliament as we drove by but every picture I took managed to place a tree between us and them. It made for some excellent portraits of the blurry tree-trunks of London.
Among many brilliant things, my family got me a new camera, a Canon Powershot S95. It's basically got most of the things they put in the kind of intermediate Powershot cameras -including lots of manual options - in a small compact style wrapper that I can still fit in my pocket and take with me on adventures.
Once I figure out how to use it I think I'll have a lot of fun with it.

Pip - notice there is even a hit of depth-of-field to this. Not a whole lot, but you can actually focus it manually, which is sweet.

A forest of baby pine trees in the snow, looking very festive.

Pip catching her ball. If I were smart I would have noticed that big cut-out corner and cropped it in a little, but apparently I'm not and I didn't.

Pip doing a little dance with the intention of catching her ball. She is very good at chasing balls, very good at catching them and very good at snargling and pouncing with them. However she has no concept of bringing them back, she carries them quite happily but the moment a different thought enters her head she drops the ball wherever she is and wanders off. We got her to bring it back once but it took about 20 minutes of constant coaxing for her to puzzle it out.

Small has his Christmas sprouts. I'm very impressed by the low-light performance of this camera- there was no natural light at all by this point and it has done a great job of brightening everything up.

Zorro huffs and watches for his dinner arriving. Again, the low-light performance is endlessly better than my previous camera.
I would have shared my pictures of the Houses Of Parliament as we drove by but every picture I took managed to place a tree between us and them. It made for some excellent portraits of the blurry tree-trunks of London.