In mid-August 2011, my wife and I went to Mammoth Lakes, CA. This is a stunning area, with many great day hikes for those of us camping in a condo. For pictures, I used my Canon SX30 IS, a compact superzoom. This is a terrific camera, with a focal range of 24-840mm equivalent. You can switch from wide angle scenics to bird photography in a couple of seconds. To get good image quality, you need to use the lower ISO's; I set it to 100 , which sounds pretty slow, but, in the old days, my regular films were the Kodachromes, 25 and 64.

The camera only produces JPEGs; all the images were post-processed in Adobe Photoshop Elements. This generally involved adjustments to color, brightness, and contrast, along with minor sharpening (I set the camera to low sharpening, since this is one value that cannot be reduced).

All in all, Canon has produced a marvelous tool for the hobbyist photographer. Professionals and wannabe professionals will still need to carry 50 lbs. of stuff that costs many thousands of dollars. Composition and post-processing, not the camera, are what makes a good photograph. I'll save my cargo space for bottles of good wine from California and Bordeaux.