I’M HERE WORKING on the law review article I mentioned, even though it’s a beautiful day. I’d rather be off in the mountains taking pictures again, but since I can’t get away I’ll post this picture from Sunday.

It’s a Smoky Mountain photographer-cliche — lichen on wet rock — but it’s still kind of nice. I have to say that I’m pleasantly impressed at how well the Toshiba, which is very much a consumer-grade digital camera, does at relatively challenging stuff. This was taken at pretty close range and its macro setting does well, as you can see: Not as well as a medium-format film camera, but probably as well as a handheld 35mm SLR, allowing for the inevitable slight blur caused by camera movement and shallow depth-of-field in this kind of setting.

Somebody emailed a while back that the real news wasn’t how good the top-end digital camera equipment is, but rather how good the low-end stuff is getting. I think that may be true.

This soon to appear Olympus looks pretty good. It’s not out yet (Amazon says it’s shipping, but I think that’s wrong). I think, though, that all the 8MP cameras are using the same Sony CCD right now. I wonder if that means that this camera will have the purple-fringe issues that the Sony DSC-F828 seems to have. (Though note the mixed reports from actual users.) I’m still leaning toward a digital SLR to replace my vintage 35mm SLRs, but I do sort of wonder how much difference the increased quality will make given how happy I am with the images from the Toshiba.

Back to work. If you want more pictures, visit SmokyBlog, because I won’t be taking them today. Sigh.