I’m looking through our huge gallery of not-yet-posted photographs, looking for a good shot of Hallie to put on her webpage. The quality of our Canon PowerShot S50 is amazing. Eye-popping detail of very difficult-to-compress scenes – like gravel walkways through leafy woods. Mesmerizing detail, in fact.

Then I compare those shots to similar shots taken indoors with the same camera. Dullsville! The flash provides all of one angle for the light to bathe the scene. Everything looks flat and boring. On the other hand, the indoor shots I took with natural lighting all seem vibrant and alive.

One of my few quibbles with the S50 is that it doesn’t have a hotshoe to use with an external flash. I’d love to be able to do a bounce-flash with it or something – something to add more light angles. When I use that technique with my film camera, the images come out twice as interesting, at the very least.

I love what our new PowerShot does for us now, but I can only imagine what fun I’ll have when I explore some of the manual settings and really get into the creative side of things.

(And on another note, as soon as I find a good gallery script, you can see these pics, too. Hint, hint!)