Test Driving the Optical Zoom...

...and the image stabilization mechanism. The latter is truly cool. If your subjects weave and bob in the little viewing screen as mine do, you'll love IS. Zoomed in on the wind vane (above), which was spinning around and didn't realize that the camera stopped it til I got home and down loaded. Ditto for the mountain scenes below.

Here's a comparison of the standard lens position and the full optical zoom (12x) -- Badger or P-Mountain, as seen from my roof. In the picture above, you can barely make out the "P"; I'll grant it is a better picture, however. The mountain is about 3-1/2 to 4 miles away. Lo and behold there is a road up the side of that mountain I'd never seen before (below) plus a cell phone tower installation.

The Prescott Resort/Casino on the local Yavapai Indian rez about 2-1/2 miles away, as seen from the house; it is on a hilltop the other side of town.

Forsythia in the middle of an oak jungle. Neat the way the long lens compressed the perspective. I'm bearing in mind that my husband's best flower shots were all taken with telephoto lenses.

And finally -- a bird shot that could have been good if only 1) the towhee had lifted his head, 2) that piece of grass that is barely visible as a blur hadn't been there and 3) the camera had been set to record a 6 megapixel image instead of 2. Distance to the bird, about 15-18 feet. But, wow -- I'm lucky to have got this close to any bird at all! The critter is called a rufous-sided towhee; we always called them rummages because the field guide said that they rummaged among the leaves for their food.

Other comments on the camera after two days: the glass is not the equal to a good SLR telephoto -- a color fringe shows up on close inspection when you take extreme telephoto shots up to 8x10 size. But then, this is a light-weight point-and-shoot compromise that I think I'll find very satisfying.