Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

Recently I’ve been looking over the few blogs I follow such as mostlylisa.com and jam factory and I’ve come to the conclusion that minute44.com isn’t visual enough. It’s plenty wordy, yes yes yes. It’s not pretty, no no no. So with that in mind I have become the proud owner of a new digital compact camera. Now, because I already have regular use of the lovely Natalie’s mighty fine Canon EOS 350D SLR for experimental and high end shots, my main concern was to get something sturdy and pocket sized for quick, discreet point and shoot action. I have had some experience with my friend, Reedy’s compact, a Canon digital ixus 50 and found it a pleasure to use. I used it with great success at my friend’s wedding last year and thought that a newer more up-to-date version of the ixus would be the way to go.

Looking online briefly it seemed that the one people were talking about at the moment was the ixus 80IS which came in at about £169. Not too bad I thought, so I began reading reviews and what soon became clear was that this camera was good but not significantly better than it’s predecessors the ixus 70 and the ixus 75. So I looked at them because, hey, I like saving cash where I can. The ixus 75, despite having a larger LCD screen looked flimsy and a bit tacky to me. The ixus 70 on the other hand, looked like a little gem! sleek, robust looking and packing a more-than-adequate 7.1 mega pixels it seemed like the one to go for. Looking around revealed some bargains; Amazon had the camera listed at £113 delivered, a bargain… even more of a bargain when my mum revealed that it was being bought for me out of my step dad’s recent compensation claim for an accident he had at work!

On Friday last week, it arrived in all it’s brushed aluminium glory and I started snapping away like a man possessed. What instantly stood out about this camera was that, like the ixus 50 I’d used previously, it had an exceptional macro mode allowing me to take intriguing, vivid close-ups of things like flowers and leaves that you’d need a very expensive lens to replicate with an SLR. Other sweet features include face detection which can detect and track up to nine faces per frame and automatically adjust shutter speed, ISO settings and various other aspects to get the best shot.

So now I’m set. Expect some photoriffic blogs coming your way soon. In the mean time however, here are some shots I’ve taken since I got the camera… just a few tests, I’m not 100% down with all the features just yet.

Till next time…

Dan