Self-taught Camera Games

Taylor
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

This weekend I played with my new camera, a Nikon D40. My beloved Fuji FinePix quit a couple of weeks ago. Well, it didn't exactly QUIT...it developed (sorry...no pun intended) a tendency to not open its' lens all the way. This made my photos very short! So I took it to Best Buy and had them send it for repairs.

Estimate: $263.

YIKES! That's more than the camera would be worth to replace.

So, at my request, Mensa Boy commenced researching the next camera. It's just too much information for me to digest.

He recommended a Canon Sure Shot. We both wanted a Canon Digital Rebel, but felt it would just be too spendy...because I needed more zooming power.

But I wanted a digital SLR.

So, after he did all that research, and asked his band of freelance photogs what they suggested, I went out and got exactly what he didn't want me to get...a Nikon.

He was wistful in his disappointment. Which, of course, heaped burning coals of guilt on my head.

I?

Personally?

Love it!

The book that came with it is good, too. (Although after you've had a Fuji, pretty much any instruction book is going to be better.)

So I've been carrying it around since Thursday night, shooting photos with and without flash and on different settings, trying to learn some basic techniques to get me through the next few stories. My friend Jenny, also a writer/photographer, will go with me to take some camera classes this spring. That will be fun.

This photo of Taylor was taken in the "sports" mode. I consider it to be a great feather in my cap because the first attempt at this mode yielded a lot of blur. Apparently, you can't just set the thing to sport and expect it to capture motion well. That doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, Mensa Boy mentioned increasing the ISO sensitivity, so after I checked the book on that, I found that was the thing to do and learned how to do it. I set this one to 1600. This allowed the camera to continuously focus and "freeze motion" enough to capture it. In this photo, Taylor is doing this odd, burlesque-style shuffling thing he does with this feet and arms, sort of running in place and waving his arms.