I’ve never been much of a camera buff.  As a kid I’d take pictures and then forget to have the film developed.  As an adult, I found that I’d take pictures (on vacation, say), look at them once when they come back from being developed, and then never look at them again.  Perhaps the worst thing, though, was I never had a camera with film ready when I needed it.  I resisted buying a digital camera for years just because I couldn’t see needing one.

Three days with the new Canon Digital ELPH has changed my opinion on that.  I can take as many pictures as I want, get them developed instantly, and throw away the ones I don’t like.  No film costs, no reproduction costs:  the cost of the camera is the total cost of ownership.  I’ll perhaps want to buy some photo paper for the color printer, but I doubt I’ll actually print many pictures.

Best of all, the thing takes excellent pictures.  The photo on the left is a close-up of our poodle Tiffany, who weighs about 10 lbs.  I used LView to crop the background.  One day I’ll learn how to use Photoshop or a similar program.  The point, though, is that I probably wouldn’t have even attempted this picture with my old camera (a Canon Sure Shot), because the chances of it coming out at all were pretty slim.