Nearly Indestructible Cyber-Shot TX5

We have a new camera! Or well actually... it's supposed to be "my camera". Yay! My husband did the research and we decided this was the one that best met my/our needs.

Photo by Sony

My hubs is the photographer of the family with his fancy DSLR and lenses. While it is great to have such nice equipment in the family... I wanted a point and shoot that could fit easily in my purse/pocket. I also wanted a camera that could hold up during hiking/snowshoeing, camping trips, and the occasional water adventure (think white water rafting, snorkeling, being caught in the rain). The Sony Cyber-Short TX5 (aka "the Tyler Swift camera") fits all those needs. This thing is waterproof (to depth of 10ft), shockproof, dust-proof, and freeze-proof. John went to the store to check it out in person (I would have gone but I was out of town). When he asked the salesman about it the guy picked it up and threw it down hard on the tile floor! Then he picked it up off the floor and started showing John the features of the touch screen. Crazy!

Anyway, I'm really happy with the TX5. My only complaint so far is the touch screen is so large (it's pretty much the entire backside of the camera) that I sometimes hit buttons while just holding the camera and find myself in video mode when I don't want to be... but I think that is something I'll learn to avoid. To play with my new toy, I took some pictures around the yard. My disclaimer is that I haven't opened the instruction manual yet. In case you can't tell, I've been having a great time discovering all the flowers that have been popping up all around our yard.

A bee busy at work on the forget-me-nots.

See the bee?

Yellow Iris

Peony - getting ready to pop!

Pink Iris

Not sure what kind of flower these are..

We've got some hard working bees - love them!

Our yard has been humming with bees... I don't think I've ever seen so many in a residential area. In just a few square feet there could easily be more than a hundred bees! We actually have a neighbor a few doors down that has his own hives and harvests the honey (the perk is that we have a jar of this honey we're working on). I'm assuming these bees are from his hives. In case you're wondering they don't bother us, they are too busy working and stay close to the flowers. When I was leaned in close to take pictures they were oblivious to me being in their space.

I still have pictures from New England and my hikes last week to share... I really need to sit down and look through the TX5 manual ASAP, it'd be nice to know how to make the most of it's features. Though I think it does OK in auto... and iSweep (for panorama shots) was easy to figure out... see, I'm talking myself out of reading it already! AUGH.