h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have decided to take the plunge and create a Journal in h2g2. It certainly won't be daily, and is likely to be sporadic. I note that h2g2's conversations lists don't identify who started the conversation (a fatal omission)! Therefore I'll tag my journal entries with WL.

My old film camera's shutter relase button has been playing up and getting worse for some time. I seldom use it; witness my not finishing the roll with my Brick Lane snaps on it until several months later. So replacing it had been a low-priority task. However, Amy's picnic on Sat 30 Jul has raised its priority. Today I decided to get a digital camera. Some optical zoom ("digital zoom" is no zoom at all), and one that takes memory cards (which are cheaper per megabyte than sticks); apart from that, any old cheap one will do. After trying Jessop's (none on show that I fancied), Dixon's, Currys (identical range to Dixon's), I bought from Camera World a Pentax Optio 30 for £100 and a 128MB SD RAM card for £10.

Out to take a few snaps of this boring bit of suburbia (nobody was about, at this time of the evening), and in to install the software and to read in the user guide all the bells and whistles that I'll probably never need to use.

Very interested to hear how you get on with the camera W-L. I still have a non-digital camera, but the idea of the zoom appeals - and your zoomed photos of the Regent's Park picnic turned out really well!