Test photo: our dining room Buddha.
By hoarding my personal money like one of my young cousins and pooling all of my birthday and Christmas cash, I was able to buy the new camera that I’ve been lusting after! (At least no one had to drive me to the mall to do so.) I’ve wanted a digital SLR for years, and finally took the plunge. After getting over a few new-toy hurdles (such as running out to the store since there was no memory card in the box, the adult equivalent of “batteries not included”), I took a series of test photos and proclaimed the camera to be “really nice” and to have “a much better flash than the old one.” To which my partner replied, I SHOULD HOPE SO. Did I mention it was pricey? Yes, but it’s so nice to have a real camera back in my hands: I had no idea how much I missed looking through a view finder. (And yes, I realize it’s odd to illustrate a post about rewarding your material cravings with a picture of a buddha, but what can I say? It’s pretty! And, the camera will feed my creativity, which is an important part of my core self and brings me happiness. Or something.)
Test photo: Ellie the elephant, part of our newly-accessorized living room.
In addition to the better flash system, the big improvement of the new automatic settings (for my purposes) of this camera over my little point-and-shoot one (which is and was a good solid little camera in a fully-metal body that served me well on an AIDS ride and numerous vacations; it’s not the camera’s fault that I deleted all the Maine photos before we got it home!) is the ability to take decent photos of small things up close and personal. Yes it’s dorky, but I can’t wait to be able to get better pictures of everything growing in the garden come spring. I don’t have any truly artsy photography plans at the moment, I just plan to take the same pictures I’ve been taking and have them turn out better. Food photos that don’t all look shiny (for example). Photos of the interior of our house without the colors all washed out. Pictures of the baby where he doesn’t look like a red-eyed demon. I’m confident that as I use the camera more, more shots will occur to me. I’m less confident that my brain will be alert enough anytime soon to go back to manual shooting with any degree of success, but there’s plenty of time for that.