From the display on the camera...
1/500 second F5.6 ISO 250 300 mm AWB
Interesting point on the use of filters to protect the lens. Guess it probably isn't needed. My Minota SRT-102 has a seriously dinged frame for the 50 mm lens from being dropped. No way could you ever mount a filter on that lens again. But, last time I used it the pictures came out just fine.
I looked at several different vendors' offerings in the DSLR line before suggesting to my wife that the Sony was the one I would like under the tree. All competitors would work, I just liked (personal preference) the user interface for messing with exposure settings better, at least as it was demonstrated in the store (not an electronics store, a camera store). And the IS being in the camera body was a plus to me. BTW, I tried a couple pictures in the house to see what it would do and it was quite effective. Interior lighting, picture of the room with some fake fir branch decorations. Hand held, of course. Without the IS turned on the picture at first glance was fine, but if you blew it up on the display of the camera the fir needles weren't distinct. Turned on IS, took the same picture again and everything was solid. No flash for either. So that suggests to me that in the proper situation, IS works as advertised. I agree that at 1/500 it probably didn't do diddly for me.
In any case, this is digital camera #4 in our house. We started a number of years ago with a Sony Mavica that did 1 Mpixel and saved the pictures to an internal floppy disc. 10x optical zoom. About 20 pictures to the disc and it ate batteries. Got the Olympus C-740 about 3 years ago after pictures taken at our daughter's wedding demonstrated the relative weakness of the Sony. The Olympus is also 10x optical zoom, 3.2 Mpixel and I've got a 256 Mbyte memory card in it with a 128 Mbyte card in reserve. Just over 300 pictures on the 256 Mbyte card. Takes good pictures and the lens does well. Wife has a Fuji camera we bought just before heading to South Africa in October 2005. 5.1 Mpixel, small 3x optical zoom lens. Very thin, fits in a shirt pocket, boots fast. 1 Gbyte memory card, can put a lot of pictures on that one. But I'll take the pictures from the Olympus over the Fuji any day, even with fewer pixels. The lens more than makes up the difference. Then there's the new Sony Alpha DSLR. Not as compact or convient as either the Olympus or Fuji (by a long shot), but that's not what I wanted it for. 4 Gbyte memory card, good for just over 900 pictures at high resolution stored as JPEG files, probably not much more than 100 as RAW files. I carry it and the Olympus in the camera backpack, and toss the Olympus in my computer bag if I might need (want) to take pictures near meeting settings. But for serious pictures, the Sony is the one. For now. I can see technology causing me to look at something else in another 3 or 4 years. Maybe. I've got more resolution than I can print now.
Now, if the weather will just hold and I get some time to take some more pictures around here before flying home on Saturday.
