New Camera

Every couple of years, I upgrade and buy a new camera. I've come to like the Sony Cyber-Shots as they're small and light, easy to use, and come with a passel of features that make picture-taking enjoyable.

This time, I traipsed on over to Best Buy during my trip to San Jose and spent an hour or so messing around and testing a bunch of cameras, everything from Canons to Samsungs to Minoltas to Sonys.

The one I ended up with is the one pictured: A Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX80, with Optical SteadyShot, a 16.2 megapixel picture, an 8x Carl Zeiss zoom lens, and WiFi capabilities. It also has multiple-image, panoramic shots and movie capabilities. Plus background blurring and 3-D image as well.

One of the features I'd checked on in all of the other cameras was the WiFi feature. The helpful guy who was there explained the feature, and after hearing what I wanted to hear, I decided not to pay extra for WiFi capability.

Then, surprise of all surprises, when I got home and opened the box, I discovered my new camera had WiFi capability and I didn't even know it. Nope, I was blind as a bat, not even noticing that right there on the front of the camera, in big letters, was "WiFi." Jeez, I'm getting old.

At any rate, the camera was less than $200, and all the other WiFi models were between $300 and $400, so I was happy.

What I really like is that the zoom is twice that of my old camera (Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-TX7), and at about half the price at that.