My husband went out and bought me a brand new Canon Powershot A570 IS camera, all mine. The camera I used in the past was a Nikon that we purchased for serious picture taking. Well, that camera is pretty old and I got very frustrated with it this past Friday night when I was trying to take photos of a training session at the fire station. The training had to do with rope rescue (I don’t know the technical term for it) using the ladder truck. This was done at night. The truck was set up with its flood lights on, which really illuminated the entire parking lot. The problem I encountered is when you are trying to take pictures at night, typically you would use flash. When doing this, you illuminate all of the scotchlight on the trucks and on the gear. You then end up with everything else almost pitch black, regardless of other light sources. So, I turn off the flash and use the lighting from the flood lights (which is quite brite), but you end up with extremely blurry photographs!! I took probably 100 photographs, using all sorts of modes on the camera, only to end up with maybe a dozen decent photographs. I was terribly disappointed and I felt like a picture taking reject.

So, Hubby says, "lets go see if we can find you a decent camera." Off we went. He explained some things to me about photography, like aperature, shutter speeds and ISO. The ISO thing might help when I take night time photos. I’m going to practice tonight at the station and see what happens. I hope it works out better. This new camera has two different night time modes, so hopefully I’ll get some decent photos. Here are some quick bullets about the new camera. So far I love it.

• Canon’s most affordable A-Series digital camera with proprietary Optical Image Stabilizer Technology for steady shooting at all zoom settings. ( I need this because I can’t take a steady shot to save my life)

• 7.1 Megapixel resolution and powerful Canon 4x Optical Zoom lens in an elegant silver metallic body for those must have family moments.

• DIGIC III Image Processor with improved Face Detection Technology and Red-eye Correction for sharper images and improved functionality. (Nice and quick)

• Clear, high-resolution 2.5-inch LCD for easy on-camera viewing

• ISO 1600 and High ISO Auto to reduce image blur and expand low-light shooting capability. (Perfect for night time)

• Four movie modes including 30 fps VGA and 60 fps Fast Frame Rate. (Takes nice movies too)