Candice and I have a new camera! We both had old 3-megapixel digital cameras from a while ago, but Candice‘s HP Photosmart 715 is sort of big and clunky, and my Olympus C-3040 uses SmartMedia memory which is hard to find. We decided we might as well get something better to take to Paris, so we took an early wedding gift and bought ourselves a Sony Cybershot DSC-W70.

It’s 7 megapixels, the size of a deck of cards with a decent lens (I’m spoiled by the f/1.8 lens on my Olympus, but this is as good as any on this class of camera), and while it doesn’t have manual override of everything it’s got enough flexibility for 90% of what I’d use a camera for, and it was on sale for cheaper than the 5-megapixel version!

We went down to the Byward Market for a few hours today for the Canada Day celebrations (note to self: do not do this next year), and when I wasn’t trying to fight through crowds I played with it a bit. I managed to forget about all of its special modes but still got a handful of pictures. I’ve posted them all to my flickr account.

We eventually gave up on the Market — the combination of hot sun, hundreds of people, and limited menus with inflated prices doesn’t make for a particularly good place to flop — and we headed down Elgin Street for dinner instead. We ended up at Maxwell’s with a window seat, a bottle of wine, and some yummy pasta (and later a slice of chocolate pecan torte and cappuccinos) for a couple of hours, and then just came home and flopped. Stompin’ Tom was on TV and that was better than the musical lineup downtown anyhow.

We bought a present for Spratt! We’ll have to mail it soon.

Also: Eek, I’m getting married in one week!