Point and Shoot: The Next Generation

New CameraTwo and a half years ago, I posted about a new digital camera, a Canon PowerShot A540 6MP, and remarked on how much camera you can get for a couple of hundred dollars. History repeats itself: this new Canon PowerShot SD1200IS 10 MP Digital Camera cost a couple of hundred bucks.

I ordered it from RitzCamera, since they take PayPal. (The link in the previous paragraph goes to Amazon, not only because I am an affiliate, but also because their price was lower). They ran out of my preferred color (Orange). A real human being called to tell me that they had Grey, but that I’d have to place a new order. For some apparently PayPal-related reason, I couldn’t just change the order to substitute a different color of the same camera at the same price.

The camera arrived a few days later. The package was waiting on the front porch. The front door bore a tag from FedEx stating that the package was round the back.

My favorite shots with the camera so far include this one (featured at Universal Hub) and this one.

The SD1200IS, as you can see from the picture, is about the size of a credit card in length and width. The depth is proportional. I went for another point-and-shoot, rather than trading up to a DSLR, because I usually go with automatic settings anyway, and explored only a very small subset of the A540’s settings. But if, two and a half years from now, DSLRs are getting down toward the $200 price-point…