patndoris TechnoGeek

I’m uber happy! (That’s my new hip and happening saying garnered from my 14-1/2 year old male offspring, which undoubtedly in his opinion will fail to make me look like anything other than a parental unit attempting to use teenage colloquialisms in a vain attempt at appearing trendy.)  My new camera came today! I knew my situation was pretty sad when the camera on my cell phone had more megapixels than my actual digital camera did. I’ve been using my cell phone camera for the last year, and while it certainly is handy in pinch (and it does take somewhat decent photos) it was no substitute for a "real" camera. It does have one big advantage - I can transfer the pictures via Bluetooth. But, sadly, no matter how convenient Bluetooth transfer may be - it doesn’t improve on the quality of the photos. So one evening, about two weeks ago, I sat myself down in front of the laptop (imagine that, me on the computer, go figure) and did some research. For various reasons I won’t bother going into, my selection options were somewhat limited, but I was able to find a quite satisfactory choice in the Canon Powershot shown below:

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I had a vision in my head (no I’m not off my meds again) of the kinds of pictures I want to take. Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of photography experience, but it’s yet another thing I’ve decided I need to learn. I spent time looking at the "customer images" submitted on Amazon.com for the various cameras. I tried to find the one that had lots of images of the types I wanted to be able to take. The Canon won out with 366 customer images (some better than others) but definitely showing the range of what this camera is capable of doing (and many are very nice to view if you’ve the time to do so). And well within that range falls what I want it to be able to do.

Really good cameras cost a small fortune these days. And good golly Miss Molly how far the megapixels have come! I remember when 1 MP was a decent camera and the SD card was reasonable at 128 MB. Nowadays 8-10 MP and 2-4 GB on the SD are virtually status quo. And higher up the food chain? Holy moley! Those babies are 14 MP+, high definition, and goodness knows what else.  I really couldn’t afford to go above mid-priced. It can costs thousands of dollars just to get started on the high quality cameras, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! I just wanted a nice solid camera that will last me for several years, takes really nice photos, and will offer me a good springboard for learning more about photography.

So, now I’ll sit and read and learn all the wonderful buttons, settings, options and tips the user manual has to offer. I’ll practice along the way, hoping my feeble brain will retain the information so I’ll be able to draw upon it when I’m ready to snap that amazing photo. I’m also going to spend some time perusing a few of the tutorials from Smashing Magazine. They routinely have some really great articles and tutorials on photography and photo editing. I’m using Picnik to do a lot of online photo editing these days. Yes. I paid for a year’s membership just because, but I can get a pro-rated refund if I find I’m not using it - and in conjunction with my seriously outdated Photoshop Elements of a version so old I am embarrassed to speak it’s number, the two combined offer me the editing tools I need, while allowing the developers on Picnik to continue to offer a free version (albeit with just a few less editing options but still quite so very useful) to those of you I may convince to give it a try. Wow! That was a serious run on can you say it in one breath sentence! I don’t want or need the full blown Photoshop (which would cost me substantially more, and even that’s an understatement - since I refuse to use pirated/cracked software for my own personal reasons). Besides, I wouldn’t use nearly enough of the features, I wouldn’t remember how to find them if I needed them, and I really have a distaste for those photos which have been so highly processed, touched up and enhanced they no longer look real.

Tomorrow I’ll be off after work to buy a very reasonably priced (on sale) 4GB SDHC memory card for $14.00 and then I’ll be good to go! I’m hoping within the next few weeks I’ll be snapping (and minimally editing) some nice photos and getting them posted. It is certainly a perfect time of year to take some nature shots. Ones that meet with my overly critical approval will be posted in my Flickr photostream. (Some of you may notice I’ve removed most of my photos from Flickr in favor of Photobucket.  If you want to see the older photos you can ogle them on my Photobucket, and many are on Multiply as well.) I won’t bore you with the reasons I’m using both Photobucket and Flick - it’s really just an OCD and perfectionism thing that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me anyway.