It's just this little chromium switch, here... (derspatchel) wrote,
It's just this little chromium switch, here...
derspatchel

picture time

I finally entered the world of the Digital SLR this week. (I couldn't get a regular digital camera; I hate the small ones and they way they feel in my hand and the fact that you can do stuff with them but not all that much.) So I got a Pentax K-x inexpensive entry level DSLR and immediately remembered how one of the most satisfying sounds in the world is that SLR shutter clunk. I bet there would have been better cameras to get, but this one had the stuff I liked and none of the stuff I was remotely interested in, and I have a serious Pentax brand loyalty since my first "real" camera was a K-1000, that marvelous manually-set camera which gave me so many wonderful shots over the years. (I learned to shoot B&W on it, then I learned to develop and print my own stuff, and while I'd probably be as rust as hell taking off a film cap in pitch black and threading a spiral tank, the smell of fixer and stop bath brings back so many fond memories and is another reason why Ferranti-Dege leaving Harvard Square was such a depressing loss.) The K-1000 may or may not have survived this spring's basement floods and if it did, I will be absolutely psyched to grab the 20-500mm lens from it, get it fixed/cleaned/ungunked, and stick it on the new one. Hooray for the K mount!

The first thing I did when I took it out of the box was take pictures of the cat. Today I went to the Stone Zoo with Carolyn and we had a marvelous time and I took some pics. I still haven't read the manual, but I've found some extra features on my own through trial and error. The neat thing I noticed was that the camera has a tilt sensor so it will helpfully rotate vertical pics you took. Thanks, camera. Thamera.

I'm still experimenting with it a lot and trying not to start getting snooty about things. For me, the camera will be a wonderful step up from the Crummy Cameraphone and give me more reasons to take more pictures as well as record video when I need to. And even though I don't know all it can do or what some of the buttons on the side do, I had an absolute blast today taking pictures of a zoo. Just to see what I could do.

One of my photo rules, which I started when I was taking single-use box cameras to Coney Island and then using the fixed aperture cameraphone, was that post-processing may be nice but I like it better when I present things as I saw it. I stay away from it when possible, though I do admit sometimes a little color saturation boost is very nice. Of the zoo pics all I took only one had a hell of an incongrous crop because my zoom couldn't handle a pic from a longer distance than usual, but thankfully it was saved at 4000xsomethingbig so I could crop nicely.

I will not listen very much to any constructive criticism involvin retouching to make a "perfect" shot. I'm not interested in perfection; I'm interested in what my eyes see and what I make the camera see with my eyes. If the colors or light levels turn out to be sub optimal, I'll fool around with them a little, but definitely not for the cause of Making It Perfect. These may not all be classic shots but I'm very happy with what I have.

I know I ain't no professional but what I am is me, and what I like to do is take pictures, and that is all that counts. Anyway. This is gonna help keep me busy and provoke me to take more wonderful fun walks.

went zoo saw animuls Photo Set

Crane thru fence Is thirsty flamingo Wooden dinosaur carving

I really look forward to taking lots of great roller coaster pictures this summer. (So remember in 2006 when I got that cameraphone and took pictures of everything? Yeah, well, that's gonna start happening again.) But so far I love my new DSLR and can't wait to see what other goodies I can get out of it.
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