With “click and collect” a Friday morning shop can be quite interesting.  There in the trolley with the weekend fruit and veg, bin liners and washing powder there’s a pack of hoover bags and a new camera.

I last wrote about cameras in February 2015.  Regular readers might remember that the new camera almost came a cropper on Boracay beach when we were in the Philippines shortly afterwards, when I dropped it in the sand?  Though it’s been mostly ok, there are still times when it crunches as it comes to life (presumably caused by a few grains of sand in the mechanism which opens the lens cover?) and there are still the irritating grains which appear inside the lens from time to time.

Can you see one in the top corner?  Whilst it stays there, it’ll be fine, but it might just find its way to somewhere in the middle, when it’s a pain in the neck!

I’ve muttered about the build quality of cameras before, because usually it’s that which propels me into buying a replacement.  It’s my own fault really – I don’t “treasure” such things, but throw them into my bag with everything else, cart them around the world without a case and generally use them – and love them – to bits.  I’ve taken tens of thousands of photographs with this one and don’t really feel it owes me anything, but recently, the battery cover has begun to spring open of its own accord.

Then, when we were in St Petersburg, I was trying to review a couple of photos, using the round dial to navigate through them when that too came loose and wouldn’t work properly.  Though neither was mission-critical, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was looking for a replacement.

And then my textile friends began chatting about cameras and I researched the current equivalent of this one.  You’ll guess what happened next.

The new one, another Sony Cybershot is slightly smaller than the one it’s replacing, but is packed with the same features and a few new ones.

This one has a pop-up viewfinder, for those days when the sun makes it really tricky to see the screen.  I have been known to take “blind” pictures, just guessing how they’ll work out, so although I probably won’t use the viewfinder that often, it’s good to have the choice.

It also has a tilt-out screen which will also go some way to resolving those issues too.  Might be good when we do the old self timer shots as well?

It has inbuilt wifi which seems a more useful feature than I’ve found it to be so far – or maybe I’ve just not taken the time to really explore how best to utilise it?  It’s so easy to connect be cable or remove the SD card, the wifi option hasn’t sold itself to me yet, particularly since I haven’t worked out a means of sending straight to Dropbox (as I can do on my phone, for example).

But yesterday, I was out taking a few photographs with my old camera, which as you can see, is still working beautifully.

I’d looked out over the valley, wondering what that blot on the landscape was – surely someone wasn’t starting to build there?

Huh.  Using the super 30x zoom, I could see that someone has been fly tipping.  Just what makes people do such things?

So I thought I’d take another look this afternoon and took this photograph with my new camera.  Of course, the light is different today, but even so, I think the detail is sharper?

Still can’t see any fingerprints  though

Anyway, having turned off the artificial “click” sound on the new one, there was just one last custom fitting required: The little bear charm on the wrist strap