Yo, shot!

[ornoth]

I’m really bored, so I guess I’ll write about last Thursday’s purchase.

I decided I needed a tiny little point & shoot digital camera to take with me on the bike, and especially for next month’s Pan-Mass Challenge. And, of course, it would also be handy to carry around, to catch the shots I see when I leave the 70-pound dSLR at home.

My criteria were (1) size, (2) image stabilization, (3) cost, and (4) maybe some sort of movie mode. I wound up picking up a Nikon Coolpix S200.

I played with it a little bit last weekend, and am mostly pleased with the results. Size-wise, it’s smaller than an Altoids tin. Cost-wise, it was tolerable, although I could have gotten it cheaper had I bought online rather than at Bromfield Camera. Movie mode far exceeded my vague desire: it can do 640x480 at 30 fps, plus it has stop-motion and time-lapse modes that I may try playing with.

You can see a couple shots I took up in Maine this weekend here.

The only minor disappointment is the image stabilization, which I thought was optical, but is actually digital, which is not as desirable. Still, it’s got to be a huge improvement over my near-worthless cameraphone, even if it is another device to carry.

I’ve gone out and done some on-bike tests, both to see how it performs and to get familiar with operating it while piloting a moving vehicle. I think it went well, so you can expect to see more and better pictures of this year’s PMC ride, and maybe a video or two of the more interesting bits!