My new toy

I just bought a new camera and I'm so excited about it! It's a Panasonic Lumix ZS5, with 12 megapixels, 12x optical zoom, manual controls, and a whole host of cool features. My crappy old 6-megapixel, 3x-zoom, no-manual-controls camera doesn't even compare. I got a good deal on it too - Best Buy was selling it on "clearance" for $250; I got it on Amazon for $180!

Like an excited kid on Christmas morning, I just wanted to play with it as soon as I got it and didn't really bother reading the manual first. I'm sure there's much more I can do with this camera, but for now here are a few samples from this past weekend...

The first thing I did was test out the zoom. I took this picture from the Alexandria waterfront, facing north towards DC. You may be able to see the Capitol building way off in the distance.

And this is with the extended zoom. I think my jaw may have actually dropped when I saw this.

Here's another picture I took with the zoom.

The camera also has the ability to stitch together a panoramic image. This picture was made from four different photographs.

Here's a fun feature called "pinhole," which gives the picture an old timey look.

And finally, spring is upon us!

You know what that means...baseball and cherry blossom pictures will be forthcoming!