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Things change. After years of holding out, I now have a real-deal digital camera.

I’m not usually such a neophobe, but I’m about the last of my web-enabled friends to get a digital camera. I started out with my mom’s K-1000 about 4 years ago, got a Vivitar 4000S for Christmas, and then a couple years ago sprung for a Yashicamat 124g medium format toy when I found I couldn’t get the detail in landscapes I wanted with 35mm film. I’m one of those black and white darkroom snobs. I’ve actually built one but - and I have no excuse for this, except for the fact that I don’t quite have the “getting water out of the room” part figured out - have yet to so much as mix a tank of developer, much less print anything in it.

This weblog - this inexpensive method of self expression - is primarily to blame when it comes down to it. Film is fun, particularly making prints, but it doesn’t bring pictures to the page at the speed I do it. And, yeah, maybe I was holding out because I like[d] being the only person I know (aside from my mom) who still shoots on film.

I chose the Canon EOS-300D. Ordered late Wednesday night, arrived today. The way I see it, I’d pay $30 (the cost of overnight shipping) to have a new camera in time for the weekend. A few shots around the office, then the embarassing chasing of geese in the parking lot. Once I got home I figured out the custom white balance (required to take a decent looking photograph of your room by a desklamp, it turns out), had a pizza while watching Penn & Teller: Bullshit (it was the one on diets and fitness. Internal dialog: maybe I shouldn’t be eating so much pizza…), and then went outside for fun with extended exposures. (This is the same image as the one thumbnailed above. Note that this image was graciously Photoshop-adjusted.) Quite the rousing Friday night!

So far so good. It’s a little daunting to step up from an SLR with about 4 controls on it to this dSLR with 2 knobs and nigh 20 buttons, but the results thus far are encouraging. More to come on this developing story.

You have been warned.

Posted: Saturday, August 28th, 2004 at 12:58 am; Category: Nerd Alert; Comments feed: RSS 2.0.
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