New Camera

My point and shoot camera died last week. It had been on it’s last legs for a short while after being dropped by my 4 year old. I had thought it would hang in a bit longer. But no. When it finally keeled over, it was very near my birthday so we decided to upgrade to a dSLR for my birthday gift! I had only  used a point and shoot my entire life but I had been working on composition and learning how aperture affects depth of field for the time when I would be able to upgrade. Well that time came sooner than I thought it would.

So there I was with a new camera in hand and just days away from our annual homeschooling conference. I didn’t know how to use this new tool but I had to do something. I set it to auto-no flash and just started shooting. I tried out various situations to see what it could and couldn’t do. The results were surprisingly nice. The camera can take much better pictures indoors (no flash) than my old camera. That is a relief since most of my photos are snapshots of my kids playing inside. The auto setting on the camera is smarter than my old camera. It is adjusting for depth of field much better so I am getting some lovely in focus foreground and blurred background images without having to choose settings. While it is better, I still want to play with settings manually to see how far I can push it because I wold like it to go even farther. Finally, the camera is just fun to use. I feel like the photographer I want to be with this cool tool in my hands!

Here is what I accomplished with this tool so far. These photos are straight from the camera (except cropping out distractions on the two as noted).