** click for full size **

I like taking macro photos. I've got hundreds of these on my hard drive. They're all incredibly boring, like my rambling blog posts. I use a Canon PowerShot A420 that Mum and Dad gave to me because they had an A540. To say it was the lowest end camera made at the time, and on clearance when they bought it, the picture quality is quite good. 3.2 mega pixels sounds crap compared to the current nothing-below-8 standard. It's got a macro (not a true macro, obviously, but everyone calls it "macro") mode that allows me to focus on things about 15-20 cm from the lens. Not great. Especially when with 3.2 MPi, there really isn't any room to crop. The lack of manual focusing is limiting, as is the inability to add flash units, filters, lenses, etc., and mainly to control the exposure.
When I was taking Mr. Stone's photography courses in high school (best class ever, Mr. Stone), Mum and Dad were going to get me a used SLR for my birthday/Christmas, but I wouldn't have used it much as there was no auto exposure setting, not even shutter speed or aperture priority modes. I could've done it manually, but it's a pain when you just want to take a photo of someone. And photography was expensive then. Not just buying the film, but having it developed and printed. The cool thing about digital is that you can just keep snapping away and delete all but the best later (or not, as most people just leave them all on their hard drive, and I have to back up 40 GB of photos to DVD when they download and install "XP Antivirus 2008" and hose their computer).
I thought I'd need to save up for an DSLR, but maybe not. At work we sell the Canon S5 IS. They were released at $499 in May 07 I believe, but have since been dropped to $369. The Canon S6 was announced last week, so now they're on clearance for $319, and I get an employee discount of 10%, meaning after tax it would cost me $326. Not bad to say it does most of what an SLR can do, but also takes movies. It doesn't take changeable lenses, but takes an adapter for lense attachments. It's got a 12x (that's miles more than most standard SLR lenses), and a "super macro" mode, allowing the photographer to focus on the subject even when it's touching the lense! I'd say that's pretty impressive.
We had 6 in the front lockup at work this morning. Adrian sold one this afternoon. Five left.
But for the time being, the A420: (EDIT - it's seems it's actually an A410)

I just can't get close enough.
...and 10 minutes later ...


The "bistro set" Julia and Brian gave me:
Guess the texture: