Jules Jones

Had a poke around a couple of websites to get a feel for what I might want, and then had a chat today with a friend who's a pro photographer, who suggested that I go and have a word with our branch of Jacobs. I have come away with their mega kit in-house repack of the Canon Ixus 115 HS, which includes the OEM box, plus an off-brand spare battery, a 4GB SDHC card, and a Crumpler carry pouch, for 120 quid. There are other possible options out there, but this was everything I need for Eastercon inna box. I had a play with the demo one, and although the teeny weeny controls do not suit my middle-aged eyes, it really is sufficiently simple in point and shoot mode that it doesn't matter, and the optical zoom seems to be just about good enough that I can probably take stage shots with it (assuming the online reviews are right about it doing well at 800 ISO).

This isn't a direct replacement for the late lamented, and it certainly isn't a replacement for the film SLRs that have been lying unused for a while, but it will do very nicely as the pocket camera half of a return to my old style of carrying both a pocket camera and an SLR and using both according to the situation. It should also be Good Enough to make do with until I feel that I can handle a mid-range serious enthusiast's camera safely again -- which is probably not going to be for a few months, even if I'm showing rapid improvement on the RSI.

Rather than a digital SLR, I may go for friend's recommendation of a Canon G12 when I've got the money and working muscles. One of the reasons I never got around to buying a digital SLR to replace my old film SLRs was that for various reasons I was doing less photography anyway, and I then found that the A620 I acquired as a hand-me-down actually did pretty much everything I wanted most of the time from either a pocket P&S or an SLR. It didn't fit in a pocket, but it was small enough to keep in a handbag or on a belt loop. Another high end compact may well be the way to go.