First, find some flowers.

This (plus most of the recent flower/plant pictures in my Photostream) was taken with a Panasonic DMZ-TZ6 camera that I picked up for a song in a sale. I bought it because it has a Leica Vario-Elmar lens which not only has a 12x optical zoom, but also a terrific macro capability. It’s a truly extraordinary lens. The only downside is that the camera doesn’t have a standard mini-USB connector. Why can’t camera manufacturers see sense about things like this? (And don’t get me started on to the subject of battery chargers. We have three Canon digital IXUSes in our family, each of them superficially identical, and yet each requires its own charger. Madness.)

Flickr version here.