@ Head

So I spoilt myself yesterday with a new camera, a Sony DSC TX5.  It’s small, slightly water proof (10 foot), and fits in my pocket easily. It’s a little awkward to hold at first but I’m adapting to it. Controls are all via touch screen. I like the form factor and the touch screen is nice and responsive.  With indoor shots I tried last night, I found the anti red eye actually added an overall red tinge, but it has a really cool twilight setting that doesn’t use the flash, instead it takes multiple exposures and works it out. I haven’t got any of those photos to show right now, but I was very happy with the pictures: not having the flash makes them look far more natural.  For outdoor shots, for a simple point and shoot, I’m pretty happy. These are some I took this morning: (you’ll probably have to click on them to see them in greater detail over on picasa)

The greens in the above, (and yellows) are pretty accurate.  Also zoom in to see the detail around the ant on the lemon.

In the pictures of the kangaroo, one is ISO 200 and the other ISO 125. With the ISO 200 the face of the kangaroo is lacking detail (that water pastel brush looking effect). I’m guessing that is more to do with the camera trying to compensate for what it thinks is noise. The day was dull/overcast as well. The ISO 125 picture was better. Both were shot with full zoom (x4). With my other cameras I’ve had similar problems with kangaroo faces on zoom.  The ISO 125 picture gives me hope it’s just the skill of the operator that’s at fault, not the camera.  but in any case, in both pictures, the grass colouring and detail is pretty good.

Overall I’m really happy with the colour accuracy, especially the greens and the yellows (but perhaps that’s more because my old lumix wasn’t so good in that aspect). It’s got some nice ease of use features (and others I still have to read the manual about). But probably its best feature is it’s size: it’s just so easy to slip it into a pocket and take it with you.

:)