Latest Addition to the Household

As a card-carrying member of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the author of a weekly column for which I am to be paid, starting this week, to provide print-quality pictures, I do need a decent camera. My current model was politely described last night by someone close to me as "well-loved." It seems to be failing, and I've determined to replace it before I am caught mid-article with no camera.

To that end, I have just purchased a Panasonic DMC-FX9 Digital Camera.

It's got 6.0MP resolution, a nice big LCD, Optical Image Stabilizer, 14 scene modes, and a release time lag of 0.006 seconds. (That means I may actually be able to capture that shot of Zuzu doing something adorable, and delete my current album of shots of the back of her head.) It comes with a 512MB SD Card, which should hold about as many pictures as my current two 128MB cards, taking into consideration the higher resolution of this camera.

It's sleek and stylish. And it comes with a case. I've learned my lesson, and am going to try henceforth to avoid dropping my nice camera into purse or pocket sans case. That bad habit definitely accelerated the demise of the last apparatus.

If I'd bought it in Europe, I could've gotten it in red. But at my rock-bottom outlet of choice, black was the only option. That's ok--red is the old black. The new black is--black.