Beautiful Victoria, BC

This past weekend, Rose, her parents, and I went to Victoria, BC to check it out. We spent Friday night in Vancouver and then took the first ferry (7AM! :O ) to Victoria for the entire day on Saturday. Here’s us on the ferry:

The ferry going to Victoria was pretty cool. It had a cafeteria, a buffet, and a work lounge ($7 admission, but you get free continental breakfast). The only thing not cool about the ferry was that all the seats had arm rests so you could lay across multiple seats and take a nap. That’s probably by design to stop people from monopolizing multiple seats when the ferry is full, but it’s quite annoying when you want to nap and there’s no one else on the ferry using those seats…

When we got to Victoria we headed to Buchardt Gardens, quite a photographer’s dream! It was a bright and sunny day so we got some great shots. Here are some from my camera:

Our cameras were filling up quickly so we really had to start being picky about which shots to take; I can easily see someone filling up gigabytes of flash memory here

After Buchardt Gardens, we went to downtown Victoria for a stroll. Along Government St (which is the main street in Victoria), there are lots of shops with big stuffed animals in front. We’re not sure why it’s all the rage there, but we took some pictures of them too

We walked around everywhere, taking in the sights and sounds. It’s quite a beautiful little downtown area. Quite touristy, but oh well, that’s what we were anyways.

While taking all these pictures, I started playing around with the more advanced controls on my Canon Powershot S400 (which I think has been discontinued now). It’s got some cool adjustments for those who like to tinker – exposure, color balance, ISO modes, auto focus settings, etc. But I quickly found myself frustrated with the menu interface (which requires you to use the screen and is also slow to navigate) and the inability to precisely control the auto focus. It makes me think that perhaps it’s time to upgrade, but that presents me with a major choice: is it time to go dSLR?

My co-worker Terry is quite knowledgeable about cameras, optics, and photography in general so I consulted him. He convinced me that in order to get the best photos, I’ll need to use a dSLR. The problem though is that those things are huge, especially if you’re also toting around a few lenses. I keep asking him why I can’t get awesome photo quality out of a compact digital camera and he keeps telling me that it’s the physics of it all. You just can’t get good optics in a compact point and shoot. Argh!

Anyways, I’ll probably end up with a Nikon D70s or a Canon EOS 20D if I decide to go dSLR. If I decide to stay with a compact, Terry highly recommended the Casio Exilim EX-Z750, so I’ll probably check that out.

Here are a few cool pictures I got my S400 to take, check out the rest of my Victoria set at Flickr if you’re bored at work

Rose took the last one of the big government building – pretty sweet shot