smell the flowers

i bought a new digicam a week ago: a canon630, 8mp, large swivel LCD screen, red-eye reduction, & chock full of features. it sucked. the moment i opened the box and held it, it felt cheap. then last night, a black bear crossed the porch and was hanging out scratching its butt in the yard, so i grabbed my new toy to take pictures, and everything came out black. the powerful zoom was pointless. i tried it on auto, i tried screwing with the ISO and shutter speeds, but everything still came out too dark. so today i exchanged it for a casio exilim, 10mp, 2.6" LCD, 30fps movies. the ISO doesn't go as high so it's not as great with low-light photos, but everything else seems superior, and it was only $20 more. it has a ton of scene options (the best one possibly being a "Food" setting), and it creates different photo layouts like to make calendars or to put multiple snapshots in the same shot. i think this one's for keeps. next up: underwater housing for when i start scuba diving.