I am absolutely amazed at how quickly the entire camera industry has switched to digital. It seems like they dabled in digital for a few years and then one day, everything switched to digital.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.  Digital is vastly superior to film in almost every way (except possibly with B&W).

What is making me crazy is that almost everyday a new, very-cool, digital camera comes out and it doesn't have wide-angle capabilities. So I'm left either carrying a significantly heavier camera or an extra lens.

When I go hiking and I get in the mood to shoot some pictures I need a camera that has enough wide-angle to capture a lake or to capture some object (like a log, or flowers) in the foreground and still show the beautiful lanscape around it.  That's hard to do when your camera has only the equivalent of a 35mm wide angle (BTW, that's not really even wide angle).

As I understand it, the reason that most digital cameras don't have sufficient wide angle is because the image sensor is smaller than film and it's difficult to make a lens that brings the breadth of light into such a small area.  But who cares about the technical excuses?

I ended up buying the Canon Powershot Pro 1 (shown here) because it had a 28mm wide-angle equivalent.  I'd say 28mm that's the minimum;  24mm would be nicer.  The Pro 1 weighs about 1 1/2 pounds.  More than I like and it doesn't have the nice image stabilization features of the newer cameras.  The Pro 1 was originally released in early 2004, so it's pushing 3 years old.  That's an eternity in digital cameras.  In fact, I went out to B&H Photo Video to make a hyperlink to their Pro 1 page and they don't even appear to carry it anymore!?

Ok, I'm done complaining.  Next week I think I'll write a blog entry about each of my cameras that I use backpacking.  I'll describe the strengths and weaknesses of each and hopefully that help others make intelligent choices.  Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will pipe up and bring some additional insight to the table.  Clearly, the choices are getting better.