ICH HEISSE MEG
We decided that a...





...suitable combo present for Mother's Day (belatedly, as I was in Spain then) and the upcoming Father's Day would be a second digital camera for la familia Ehman. I have been using a Canon PowerShot A70 since shortly after it came out a couple years ago. While it is still among the highest rated digicams, especially among the cheap and cheerful three-megapixel types, it doesn't quite do the job when you start cropping and enlarging (e.g., for the EFB).

So after an hour or so of research on the web, it became clear that you could go thin and light (though not inexpensive, and with relatively few features), or considerably more expensive and get a digital SLR with 8 megapixels and interchangeable lenses, etc. (the new Canon Digital Rebel XT is getting rave reviews and can be had for well under $1,000), or you could go somewhere in between.

"In between" was an easy choice given that the top-rated model is the latest generation of the A70, the PowerShot A95. Batteries and chargers, cables, memory (SD cards), operating menus, etc. are essentially the same for both cameras, and the A95 can be had for US$299 or so, about the same in Euros here in Europe.

So Meg and I went technology shopping this afternoon and brought home a new A95, and after playing with it for a bit we can say that it definitely lives up to its "Editor's Choice" billing.



Meg unpacked and set up the A95 in about five
minutes, then took this pic -- point and shoot.



Then I took this one of Meg with the old A70
in hand.

We even shot a little video with the A95 for our first-ever video post to the EFB. If you have a broadband connection and QuickTime installed (most PCs and Macs do), click on the link below; after 15-20 seconds (depending upon the speed of your connection), a QuickTime viewer should pop up and play the brief "Ich Heisse Meg" video (5mb).