Cacti

Here are the last pictures from my early April trip to Arizona. I had fun using some of the SLR features of my new camera, especially the one where I can do manual focusing. When I am taking close-up pictures, a auto-focus often chooses something other than what I want as the main object to focus on.

With the manual focus and the interchangeable lenses of the DSLR, it feels just like taking pictures with a "regular" camera, except that I am not wasting film if I take 15 pictures of the same thing as I try different settings.

I missed that flexibility with our other digital cameras. That, and the viewfinder. I don't mind the viewing screen, but I prefer to use it as a post-picture check to make sure I got what I was trying for. Somehow, it never felt quite right not to have the camera up to my eye while I was shooting.

But I do love not wasting film. Since, I like my father, take way too many pictures at every opportunity, it is really nice not to have to pay to develop all that film just to get a small batch of good photos.

Camera stuff

I have several topics I want to blog about - daffodils for one - but I really want pictures to go with the posts. Unfortunately, for the last month I have been practically camera-less - our trusty Nikon Cool-pix began to give up the ghost. It is 8 years old, and has served us well, until January. All of a sudden, it stopped taking pictures on the normal setting. Sometimes it works OK in close-up mode, but not always... Crisis! I feel almost handicapped without a working camera.

What to do? I had been promised a camera - a SLR with changeable lenses - for my birthday, but I didn't want to wait that long, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I don't need that much power right now. I would love it, but I doubt either of our home computers could easily deal the picture size, among other things. Instead, I asked Dad to send me his "old" camera - only a couple of years old, and a lot younger than ours. It arrived yesterday, and I have started taking pictures. So, I will be back blogging about real topics soon, I promise!