Arizona

Dec 3, 2009

Recently I bought a Canon s90 (well I bought it after selling off some photo equipment that was going underused). The features impressed me, as well as its compact size. I hate fiddling around with an SLR and various lenses so having a compact camera with a zoom lens has an enormous appeal to me - however their image quality is typically quite inferior to that of an SLR. While the s90 doesn’t deliver DSLR quality - it is a huge cut above normal compacts that I’ve had experience with in terms of dynamic range, and low-light performance.

With my old SD850 it just had a certain look that screamed POINT-N-SHOOT, but I don’t feel that with the results I got from my Thanksgiving trip to Arizona.

Let me state here that America’s National Parks are my most favourite thing about the country. They do a great job at providing information and access to some truly magnificent natural wonders. We only spent a brief amount of time in the Grand Canyon, and I kind of regret that. We got the bright idea that we should spend more time in Sedona which, I think, was a mistake but there wasn’t much to be done about that considering our time and hotel reservations.

Sedona does indeed have some great vistas - but you can only really see them from your car and very few mediocre scenic points if you’re not willing to dish out the dollars for a Jeep, Helicopter, or Balloon ride. The place also smacks of touristic cheesiness. It doesn’t approach the awfulness of Niagara Falls, but it’s getting there.

The first shots of this gallery are of Montezuma Castle. It was interesting to see these kinds of old Hopi settlements and I was impressed - that is until someone told me about Mesa Verde. This looks like small potatoes by comparison. Oh well, it was nice fall day and I enjoyed walking around in the park with my fiancee. The middle shots of the big canyon would be of the Grand Canyon, and the rest are basically scenes around Sedona. I included some shots from my Autocord as well.

All-in-all it was a nice trip. We did more driving than we would’ve liked, but it gave us a little taste of Arizona and I’m sure we’ll be back to the Grand Canyon one day.