Today, I got a new digital camera. I got the Konica Minolta Dimage Z6 and it's simply wonderful. It's got a 6 megapixel CCD, runs off 4 AA batteries (and it supposedly gets amazing battery life), has a 12x optical zoom, anti-shake technology, super telephoto lens, and a whole lot more. The features that amaze me most are the super telephoto lens, it can do movie editing, the USB out jack can go into a television and the camera can do slideshows right into the TV, and there's an "e-mail copy" feature which will create a duplicate of any photo, but store a 640x480 version. Awesome!

Here are some 640x480 versions of photos I took tonight with the camera. Keep in mind that I am ABSOLUTELY not a photographer, have no idea what I'm doing, don't know what half the buttons on the camera do, etc. I imported these into iPhoto and exported them to 640x480 without touch-ups or image-size optimizations. The files are a little bigger than I'd like them to be, but they are what they are.

Tonight, our good friends, Niels and Carrie, went out with us to Golden Spoon (the link provided shows the store a couple of blocks away from the one we went to... the one we went to just opened and isn't in their directory yet) for some frozen yogurt. The great thing about this place is that the yogurt is really low in fat and calories. The "mini" size, which is definitely enough frozen yogurt for me, is only 68 calories! Anyway, I thought they would make good test subjects. Here are some photos from our evening together:

• All of us (I'm way in the back of the photo... in the mirror)
• Carrie
• Super Telephoto Lens test - the lens is literally 1 cm away from the cup... amazing.
• A photo in the mirror
• Niels giving me some chop suey
• Niels eating yogurt
• Captain Spoon-eye

And here are some other images I took. Most of these were just tests to see how the camera works and to get myself comfortable with using it.

• A nice picture of Sarah
• Our dining room in all its glory
• Digital zoom - I'd never used digital zoom before. The book spine seen in this picture can be found on the bottom shelf in the back of the dining room. I took this photo from the same place as the last photo
• Testing the optical zoom - Again, from the same place as the last photo
• A shot of the living room
• Another optical zoom shot
• Another optical zoom test from the same place on the couch in the living room