We have a Digital Camera!

Richard got home last night :-) Not at 11pm, as he should have done, it was about 5am by the time he finally got in. He did phone from Gatwick to say he'd been horribly delayed so Tim and I didn't wait up for him. Sophia, who mysteriously seems to understand almost everything we say, was apparently expecting him at 11pm however since she started making a huge fuss around that time and making the mews she uses when talking about Richard. Evidently she didn't hear me telling Tim about the delay....

This morning when he unpacked, he produced the Canon Digital Camera we ordered (this post explains why we decided on this particular model). It's a bit smaller than I expected, but heavier than it looks. That's good, because I don't like very light cameras: they're too easy to shake when shooting. It's far more complicated than our previous basic Polaroid model, with a detailed and technical user guide, which I've peeked at a couple of times without much benefit. And it required all its software to be installed from the CD since I have Windows 2000. Picasa doesn't seem to recognise it at all, which is a bit of a nuisance, but it comes with something similar that does work.

Anyway, the easiest way to learn to use something is by trying it out, so here are a few of the photos I tried taking. I'm very pleased with the colours, the sharpness even at fairly close distances, and the flash indoors. Less pleased that it seems to consume batteries considerably faster than our old camera!

These were taken on auto setting. Click the ones that don't look quite so sharp if you want to see how clear they become in the larger versions. (Note to self: try lower quality images next time. Uploading these five pictures took nearly half an hour! Oops...)

This is a bit of bougainvillea hanging down in our porch. It really needs pruning, but we'll wait till the bracts have gone brown.

One of our lemon trees is doing extremely well... these are typical of the crop we expect to be ready by about November or December.

Here's a few of the many pomegrantes which are going to be ripe all at the same time in September. We never know what to do with so many, so the vast majority end up on the compost heap. Of course we eat some, and give away what we can.

Sophia, cleverest of our cats, realised she couldn't quite reach the water in my tall glass so she started dipping her paw in and drinking from the droplets she caught. I've never seen any other cat figure out how to do that! Of course it would have been easier for her to go to her water-bowl in the kitchen...

And here she is again, determined to stop me working on the current jigsaw puzzle.