Apparently I took about 4,700 pictures in 2005. That's what Windows tells me when I look at the file count for that folder anyway. Some of them are up in the galleries at On Beaches. The majority of those are annotated by the the journal I wrote about last year's vacation in Wasaga Beach, Ontario.

That worked out really well but it's not the only thing I intend to put up on that site. It seems like many of the trips I go on end up near the water (hence the name), so I want to keep details of all my outings there, including the best of the photos that I get. Eventually I may add some useful travel tools for other people that want to spend some time on the beach. Until then it's my travel diary and photo album. When Candace and I went down for E3 last year, we took the following weekend to go see some beaches in the area. We snapped hundreds of pictures a day. We got shots of nature scenery, surfers, sun seekers and plenty of interesting sites. It takes a long time to process those pictures and weed out the best of them. Working on vacation photos is a great way to relive the memories though. I'm glad I took so many and I really enjoyed the huge task of touching them up (just cropping, sharpening, keystoning and that sort of stuff). Now that I'm done with one full day's photos, I've put them up in a new gallery at On Beaches. I'm still going to be doing some shuffling around and I'll clean up the captions over time (right now they're just the same as the file name). Most of that day was at Malibu Beach and Lagoon State Park. Absolutely gorgeous scenery. I love watching the waves, seeing the kids play in the surf and looking out at where the mountains meet the ocean on the horizon. Looking back is a great way to forget about the dreary weather outside in Windsor. All the pictures I've done so far have been taken with my Sony DSC-P72. It's not a great camera, but it's been reliable up until now. A couple times this year it's given me a funny flicker on the screen. I turn it off and on and it goes away for now, but it's making me wonder if I can count on this camera to last much longer. So I've been looking at potential replacements. I could get another 'point and shoot' digital.

Since I've seen how much better the pictures with the Canon A75 are, I'd look at their replacements for that model. Something like the Powershot A610. It's 5 megapixel, 4x optical zoom and it takes an SD memory card. The price range is around the same as I paid for my current camera back at the end of 2003.

Of course, now that I see how many pictures I take with the digital camera... And I see how hard it is to get a quality shot that I can work with in a JPEG... I start to think about getting a camera that can shoot in RAW format. Candace has the Canon Digital Rebel and she takes some really great pictures. Now I know that talent is important, but I feel I'm setting myself up for a second-rate results with a point and shoot. The shots at On Beaches turn out great because they're outdoor in bright light. I've had to pass over many others because of less-than-perfect lighting or poor detail. I think I'd get more out of an SLR like the Digital Rebel XT. Besides the expense, there's a big learning curve, and the camera is substantially bulkier than what I'm used to. The idea excites me too much though. I know I'm going to end up taking the plunge, it's just a question of when.

And will it be silver or black?