2009: The New Camera...

Okay, I am stepping forward to the present for a post, maybe more, to bubble with enthusiasm. I finally got a new camera. Well, new to me at least. It's a gently used Nikon D200. As far as I am aware I am the third person to own this camera. I have been pricing and thinking about a new camera for almost a year now. Ever since some people talked to me about photography and stuff. Of course even good used cameras aren't cheap. Well my friend knew I was in the market and asked if I wanted to buy his. He was upgrading to a better model and by selling me his old camera it helps to defray the costs. So I have been waiting for him to get his new camera so I could get my grubby mitts on his.

He was generous and allowed me to play with the D200 from time to time. Mostly to teach me what to do and how it handles. A week ago I got to use it and shot some, I think, decent shots.



Well, I got the news and on this past Sunday I was handed a camera. Now, I have been learning how my old camera worked and most of my pictures were turning out decently overall. All of a sudden I was thrown to the wolves and making a whole bunch of new and old mistakes. Like the evil of over exposure.



Well, I was shown how to adjust that and learned about the handy dandy light meter. (I even found out it shows up in the view finder).

And I started to take some more decent pictures. I was also given a lens with the camera. OMG!!!!ELEVENTY!1!!1 No more digital zoom, I was doing optical baby. Of course I had to test it out.



Now, I had gotten the overexposure problem mostly solved. Then I learned about under exposure. Yep, more bad pictures. Once again I thank the digital age for saving me massive film costs as I am learning.



Slowly I got the hang of it. And still I am getting the hang of it. There are so many buttons and meters, and settings, and, and... I think it's going to take awhile for me to figure everything out. I have been getting better at it though. I will be needing some more lenses soon. Even though I have only one lens, I am not letting it restrict me.

Even after the sunset.


Keep walking, and I think it's time to get a back support too.

PaladinPhil

A Step Forward

So there I was in the 90’s. Computers were taking off like gangsters, everything was in a downloadable format, even though it took forever. I saw my first digital camera on a tech news program. It was an interesting gadget being used by one of our regional newspapers down at sporting events. It used a regular camera body and lenses. I don’t know what type of sensor it had, I just knew that the photographer carried around a storage device that was huge. The camera was attached to this device by cable and stored the pictures there when they were shot.

Cameras started getting better and smaller. Internet services started getting faster and faster as well. Media storage increased in size without increasing in physical size. Parts of devices started to shrink in size and increasing in capability. Back around 1999-2000 I saw one of my first digital cameras. It cost over a thousand dollars, and it used a diskette for media storage. I saw immediately how this could change all sorts of photography, from personal to professional. Of course the cameras were limited by the size of the sensor and how large the picture file was to be saved. Usually 5 to 10 shots and the diskettes were filled.

I kept seeing smaller and smaller cameras coming out, and then cell phones started getting cameras. Quality sucked for some of these cameras but that was too be expected. I kept putting it off on getting a new camera. They were too expensive, I didn’t own a good enough computer, etc., etc., etc. I was tempted many times. I just didn’t know what to get. There were Canon’s, Sony’s, and numerous other brands around to purchase. Trouble was I didn’t know squat about cameras or what to look for. Of course this would come back to haunt me down the road.
Next: Another step forward(almost to the present)