Last week I bought myself a new digital camera – a Nikon Coolpix S8000. My old camera is still decent, but I was sucked in by the growing megapixel rates, and more importantly by the suddely-growing optical zoom capabilities of subcompact cameras. This thing has a 10x optical zoom, about 3 times greater than my old Canon! I’m by no means a power photographer, but greater optical zoom is one of the few things I’ve wanted in my cameras, and now I’ve got it.
Then, since we were heading down that way yesterday anyway (to buy cinnamon bread at Greenlee’s Bakery and drop in at Recycle Bookstore), I surprised Debbi by taking her to the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden. This rose garden was in danger of being taken off national registries a few years ago due to neglect (presumably due to shrinking budgets), but a huge volunteer effort not on revived the gardens, but won them an award recently, as well as a lot of local recognition.
So it’s no surprise that it’s quite pretty. There appeared to be two weddings going on at the edge of the garden when we arrived. We wandered through it for about an hour, Debbi being attracted to orange and peach roses, and me by any roses that weren’t white. I also like old municipal land like this since they often have signs of early 20th century architecture or decor, which I find attractive: The wrought-iron fences, the stone benches and buildings, and so forth.
And this gave me a chance to try out my new camera, so here are a bunch of pictures: