I took this shot in the Brecon Beacons, about 24 hours before the hills – along with most of Wales – were blanketed with snow. Unfortunately I spent snow day holed up in the office.

I usually take my compact camera on walks like this. Even though I sorely miss my SLR’s ultra wide lens, I really don’t like humping around more than a kilo’s worth of camera gear.

Canon Powershots are great P&S cameras. The exposure in this shot is near perfect, even though the camera was in auto-everything mode and the only thing I pressed was the shutter (my other hand was holding the rope). But I do tend to keep mine in semi-manual mode a lot of the time.

Set these cameras to aperture priority (Av) mode and one touch of the function button on the back gives you quick access to ISO, white balance and exposure compensation. The aperture can be changed directly from the four-way rocker.

Not quite as efficient as an SLR’s dedicated buttons, but worth it for a quarter of the weight.

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