The Digital Roller Coaster

Finding a good digital camera can be confusing with all the many choices out there. A couple of years ago I was faced with replacing my digital camera while on vacation after it flew off a roller coaster. How did that happen?! Well, my camera was in a bag strapped to my waist, the snap came undone, and it flew off me with great force. The roller coaster was moving so fast that I didn’t even feel the bag come off. Once the ride was over, we spent about half an hour frantically searching for the bag, knowing my wallet and camera were both in there. Thankfully no one ran off with it. All the contents were still there, but my poor camera was toast.

We ended up going to the nearest Best Buy and purchased a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1, which I absolutely love. It’s an awesome camera with its very compact size, big screen and 5 Megapixel resolution. Since then Sony has come out with the second generation DSC-T3 and soon we’ll see the DSC-T7, which I’m eyeing, and trying to figure out a way to get. Maybe I’ll have to ride another roller coaster.

Sony’s Cyber-shot DSC-T7 is Sony’s thinnest, fully featured camera at only a third of an inch thick, and about the size of a credit card. Afew of its features include 5.1 Megapixel resolution, a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens with 3x Optical Zoom, a large LCD screen to make pictureviewing easy, and it uses Memory Stick Pro. The DSCT7 will be available in May for approximately $500 at www.sony.com or at any other
participating retailers.

Growing up around SLR cameras, my other favorite is the Canon EOS Digital Rebel. I had an old analog version of the Canon EOS Rebel, but unfortunately, film is out and a hassle to deal with after being digitally spoiled. Canon has a wide variety of the Digital Rebels, the most popular being the 300D and XT. The Canon EOS Digital Rebel 300D and XT both include a built-in flash and the option of manual or automatic focus. The difference between the two is that the XT is the latest version with 8.2 Megapixel resolution, Compact Flash Type II and it’s slightly more expensive. The 300D has a 6.3 Megapixel resolution and retails on average for about $700 and the XT for about $1,000. After all my camera searching was done, my lesson learned is don’t take a camera with you on a roller coaster, unless you want a new one.