Santa gets his dates all wrong
Sooo, yeah. If you're anything like me, every day
when you pick up your mail at home or work, you think
how nice it would be if somebody just decided that
day to send you a really nice, big-ticket gift. A
couple of days ago, that actually happened to me: a
satisfyingly chunky box turned out, upon opening, to
contain my dream camera, a Canon EOS 400D. It was a
present from my mum to mark her retirement from
teaching* and it has totally reawakened my passion
for photography. I'm tingling at thought of all the
stuff I have to learn, opportunities I can take and
accessories I have to know about.
I started looking through my late papa's film SLR bag, and found that although the lenses are the wrong mount system (FD rather than EF; apparently non-optical adapters are available for about £27 on eBay – any experience, folks?) the flash (semi-)works in the hotshoe, so the missus and I had fun taking big washed out stylised portraits. I might get one of the adapters after payday partly because I like the idea of using my papa's stuff from his AE-1, and partly just because one of his lenses is a sweet-looking 200mm telephoto. The 400D means that I'm shooting in RAW really for the first time, and, um, it's quite good, isn't it? I'm loving the flexibility, but hating the disappearing gigabytes. I think the time may be ripe to migrate to Aperture or Lightroom, but I need to talk to people who know more about the two before deciding which one to go for.
So, yeah. I know that this sort of stuff is neither big, clever, nor particularly difficult to achieve, but I'm still really loving it.
A reminder: I have two Flickr accounts. My cameraphone account is out-and-about snaps, while my main account will hold all my 400D shots.
* Yeah, I don't know why her retirement was a reason to buy me a beautiful DSLR, but don't draw attention to this, mmm-kay? Particularly since she very sweetly also bought Jenny a 32GB iPod touch as well. Yay, my mum!
I started looking through my late papa's film SLR bag, and found that although the lenses are the wrong mount system (FD rather than EF; apparently non-optical adapters are available for about £27 on eBay – any experience, folks?) the flash (semi-)works in the hotshoe, so the missus and I had fun taking big washed out stylised portraits. I might get one of the adapters after payday partly because I like the idea of using my papa's stuff from his AE-1, and partly just because one of his lenses is a sweet-looking 200mm telephoto. The 400D means that I'm shooting in RAW really for the first time, and, um, it's quite good, isn't it? I'm loving the flexibility, but hating the disappearing gigabytes. I think the time may be ripe to migrate to Aperture or Lightroom, but I need to talk to people who know more about the two before deciding which one to go for.
So, yeah. I know that this sort of stuff is neither big, clever, nor particularly difficult to achieve, but I'm still really loving it.
A reminder: I have two Flickr accounts. My cameraphone account is out-and-about snaps, while my main account will hold all my 400D shots.
* Yeah, I don't know why her retirement was a reason to buy me a beautiful DSLR, but don't draw attention to this, mmm-kay? Particularly since she very sweetly also bought Jenny a 32GB iPod touch as well. Yay, my mum!
