It's been quite some time since I added any posts to the blog, so I'll make an effort to fix that. In the meantime, I've been putting my new Nikon P7700 to good use whenever I can.
I was very happy with the Canon G11 that I used to use as my second, smaller camera, but I got tired of having to use something other than Capture NX2 to post-process the images I took with them. I'd rather take pictures than spend time mucking around with the files afterward, so NX2 has been a godsend for me. I'd resorted to making minor corrections on the G9 and G11 files in Canon's Digital Photo Professional and then saving the files as high-res TIFFs for final processing in NX2. This was a bit of a pain, of course, but it seemed to me that Canon simply made better compact digital cameras than Nikon did.
By the time the P7700 was released, I thought that might have changed somewhat and I was ready to take the plunge. Canon introduced their G15 around the same time, but I knew I'd miss the articulated LCD screen I loved on the G11 and that was now available on the P7700. The G15 had a slight edge with an f/1.8 lens, but I thought this was a negligible advantage over the P7700's f/2.0 and zoom equivalent of 28-200mm (vs the Canon's range of 28-140mm). Some reviewers made a lot of the P7700's lack of an optical viewfinder, but I thought the argument was overblown -- I had never used the viewfinder on the G11 because it was too small and terribly inaccurate. It was more of a cosmetic add-on than a truly useful feature. All told, the P7700 had the features I wanted in a compact camera and produced NRW files that I could process natively with Capture NX2. Smiles all around.
I took this shot during a walk with my family on the estate of former Prime Minister Mackenzie-King in Gatineau Park to blow off the cobwebs on Boxing Day. It seemed that quite a few others had the same idea: walkers, snowshoers and cross-country skiers were all out enjoying the benefits of last week's snowstorm. The little P7700 performed wonderfully and I came home with a memory card full of stills, panos and video. More smiles.