Our 2nd Digital Camera - Nikon CP880

At the end of 2000, we bought a new digital camera - Nikon Coolpix 880. We really enjoy this 3.3 megapixels camera and used it till May 2004. This camera used a special battery(EN-EL1) which was good for taking 300 pictures. In order to take more pictures in a day trip, we got a backup battery for this camera. One reason I bought this camera was it used CF card so we could use our CF card from the first digital camera. At that time, memory card was very expensive. This digital camera got 2.5 optical zoom. The macro function was pretty good. I used it a lot to take pictures of flowers, bugs and other things. I got some good pictures from local zoo.

It got manual focus; two stops for Aperture priority which I used most of time; 1.8 inch LCD. I liked the self-timer which could be set to 3 seconds or 10 seconds. We used this digital camera a lot whenever we went out for a trip or around town. We recommend this camera to many people. One our neighbour took our suggestion and bought it for his family.

In the first year, we took over ten thousands pictures with this camera. In 2003, we bought our first SLR digital camera. When our best friends left our city, we gave this Nikon CP880 to them as gift in May 2004.

Our First Digital Camera - Kodak DC215

We got our first digital camera Kodak DC215 in 2000. It was a 2Meg Pixel digital camera using 4 AA batteries; Compact Flash Card. At that time, this kind of flash was expensive. We only had 3 card with max size 16MB per card. When we visit Beijing in 2000, we brought this digital camera. We can only two hundred pictures since we run out of memory card and didn't have a computer to backup them. I used a special card reader only can read CF card. I used this digital camera and took pictures in two weddings of friends. People were amazed when they saw pictures from the weddings once I took them. We had good experience with this digital camera and used it till we got our second digital camera at the end of 2000. One of our coworkers got this camera after we let it retired for few month.

Backyard Birding

In Sept this year, we were amazed by our friends backyard birding in Austin, Texas. They have bird feeder and birdhouse in their backyard. During our one hour stay, we watched the birds coming to have lunch on one of the bird feeder. They showed us the bird pictures taken from their backyard. Last weekend, I bought a very good book "Attracting Birds to Your Backyard" and read a little. I will mail this book as Christmas gift to our friends in Austin.

When we were in our old house, cardinals came to our backyard from time to time. We love this beautiful red bird. We even bought a bird feeder and hang on the tree in our front yard. Few years ago, when my father-in-law visited, he was so glad to watch the birds around our place and attracted by the beautiful bird songs.