Camera’d Again

Yesterday I picked up our new Canon Ixus Digital 60, and in the past 24 hours I’ve taken about 300 pictures and half an hour of video. Most of it’s already been deleted (because most of it was just me learning how to use the new camera), but we’re going to be very happy with it.

And so are you. (Unless you hate pictures of Molli Malou, in which case you’re probably on the wrong website.)

Molli Malou was actually napping over at Mormor’s when I first got the camera (Trine was at a fellow student’s house working on a school project, and I was working from home), but upon my arrival with the camera she allowed only a few snaps to be shot before she decided she hated the camera and fled it the rest of the afternoon.

Because I was still learning how to use the thing, this was about the best I could do in the brief photo session she allowed:

By bubble bath time last night, however, I had learned a thing or two, and I was able to get this shot, which is probably the best photograph of her—not compositionally, obviously, but in terms of catching her personality on “film.”

The new camera is 6.0 megapixels, and this picture (and all remaining pix on this blog) were taken with the “widescreen” format, which has given me some spectacular shots. The downside is, because of the limited width of this column, I can’t really do the photos justice because their 4:3 proportions mean that all that width limits the height.

Anyway, if you click on the above picture, the link is to the full-size version. It’s only 1.75MB, and you want it.

This morning Trine took Molli Malou out shoe-shopping and afterwards we met in the agriculture-school garden that you’re all already familiar with from previous blog visits. It isn’t really in bloom yet, but it’s getting there.

We weren’t there for the flora, though. We were there for Molli Malou to feed some of the fauna.

(That little island is beautiful, and it’s a lovely spot to be in, but its logistics make for crappy photos of little girls feeding ducks.)

I’m assuming Trine was taking on the vengeful form of an unsatiated duck here, but I don’t remember. Sometimes Trine just likes to play airplane.

As I struggle to come to terms with the camera, there are going to be some missed opportunities like this:

Yes, it’s sweet, but if I had fully mastered the camera it could have been sensational.

Also sweet, but not quite there.

So close… Ah well, time for a last glance back at the park before we leave it:

(I’m very sentimental about that park because when I was a stay-at-home dad in the early months of Molli Malou’s life we spent a lot of time there.)

We passed a florist on the way home, and the colorful flowers in the warm sun were a nice reminder of spring’s arrival. We turned our clocks ahead last night, too, so now we’ve really left winter behind. At least until we get the usual April snowstorms, anyway.

The display on the new camera is gigantic, and Molli Malou’s love of her own digitized image was enough to have won her confidence back in the camera. It took very little prodding to get her to pose with her best inanimate friend in the world, her beloved Haddie. (Who had just thrown the family into a terrible crisis but staying out in the barnevogn after all the rest of us had come upstairs for lunch!)

Me: “Can you hold her up a little higher, honey? I’d like to get both of your faces in the picture.”

Molli:

That’s it for now. I’ve been experimenting with the video, too. It’s much higher resolution, though, which means it really needs to be edited and compressed before I can share it. It does, however, have a “compress for email” recording option that apparently records in a smaller, more compressed format… so it wouldn’t look good in full-screen view, but could easily be passed around in an email or posted here for downloads. (But why would you record something if you didn’t want it recorded in the best possible format? I’ll have to think about that.)

The quality of the full size video is amazing: watching it on our television—the camera plugs right into the tube—the quality is as good as anything you’d see on VHS or DVD. You’d never know it had come from a camera smaller than a pack of cigarettes.

Anyway, we’re rearmed with a camera and there’ll be plenty of Molli Malou goodness on these electric pages once again!