So given that the Instafellow is hosting the latest digital camera carnival, and I just started playing with my new Canon Powershot SD800IS, how could I resist tossing up a few photos and observations? It might even resemble blogging; something I'm doing far too infrequently of late.

I've always been happy with Canon digital cameras, and this is my third one. I was looking for a highly compact point-and-shoot that would encourage me to actually take more pictures and which would serve as my primary snapshot-taker. I wouldn't even class myself as an amateur photographer in terms of skill, but I'm a wannabe, and I enjoy capturing good shots, which I mainly do by standing in front of extremely beautiful scenery, holding up my camera, and pressing the shutter button.

The short version of my reactions to the SD800IS : it's great, and does pretty much exactly what I hoped it would. The slightly longer version of my reactions: image stabilization is da bomb !

I wasn't sure whether IS would turn out to be a useless marketing gimmick or a truly helpful feature, and I can now assure you that it is the latter. Shooting entirely hand-held, I've found it next to impossible to get a blurry photo out of the SD800 under nearly any conditions.

Where the IS really comes in handy, though, is in conjunction with the digital zoom, which goes up to 15x. I've generally found long digital zooms to be useless, in large part because shooting 15x hand-held makes it more or less impossible to get a clear shot due to camera shake (at least for me). Not so with the Canon's IS! Check out the fellow to the right: he was shot at 15x, hand-held. Not a perfect image by any means (especially as the birdie doesn't contrast well with the background bush) but you can see that it's a not half-bad shot. With previous cameras, that would be a complete non-shot.

Click through to my Flickr album, and you'll find a few more feathered friends that I managed to catch, including the pair of hummingbirds that like to snack on the nice flowers right outside my office window. And if you want more info on the SD800IS, check out Ken Rockwell's review --- he's got a heck of a lot more info !

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