Hello Gorgeous!…

I’ve been hemming and hawing for months about which camera to get… (according to a quick search of my blog, heh, it’s been since early December 2009 😳 )…

When my SIL and BIL came to visit in May (just before my move), my BIL let me fiddle with his Canon Rebel. It is such an expensive piece of equipment that I didn’t do too much least I break it. I told him how I wanted to know more terminology before jumping in and buying such a camera, he encouraged me to just go ahead and get one and I would learn as I got used to the camera. I really liked how the Canon Rebel felt in my hands.

When I first got my digital point and shoot the thing I missed most was being able to look through the eye lens (viewfinder) and getting a picture of what I saw through that view… it was always skewed to the side and it was annoying. Eventually I got used to using the LCD screen, but I usually had blurry pictures. I came to rely heavily on the burst function… surely one of these 8 consecutive pictures will be sharp (2 x 4 bursts). It takes me hours to go through the monotony of pictures for my blog…. anyway, I really liked that I could put the camera back up to my face look through the viewfinder and you get what you see. So I decided that once I got to San Diego, I would go out and get a digital SLR… most likely the Canon Rebel.

Do you know how many Canon Rebels there are? heh. I started feeling like I’d been spinning my wheels for months trying to decide which one I wanted… seeing as I didn’t have the terminology to decipher the difference between them. I had the opportunity to go into Best Buy with my taste-tester prior to us leaving and I liked the EOS Ti series… I liked the way they felt in my hands. Once we got here, we went to Fry’s (playing tag-team w/ the pup this time)… first, I was overwhelmed at the size of this store! It was a Sunday, so there were also a ton of people… so I felt very small and shy. I meekly went to the camera display and fiddled with the Ti1 and Ti2, and took copious notes, while avoiding sales people. I liked the Ti2… I heard a customer near me ask the salesperson for a Ti2, “I think we are sold out, let me go check”… hmm… a popular camera, I took a mental note. Given the price of this camera, it’s not like everyone is running out getting this thing unless they are also enthusiasts.

A week or so went by, life got in the way, you know. Then I started doing more research. Fry’s was indeed sold out of the Ti2 in all local stores and online, wow. Amazon had the camera with reviews… all stellar. Then I went to dpreview (website my FIL has told me about many times before for digital camera reviews), from what I could translate (because I don’t yet have the terminology) this was a great camera for the beginner digital SLR user while also having some pro-like features. Sounds good to me! I compared the Ti2 to the Ti1 and decided I wanted the upgrade. The Ti2 is 18 megapixels! Holy…. my point and shoot is 8.1… it’s going to be quite an upgrade. 😉

I ordered my camera from Amazon late Thursday night, and it arrived mid-morning Saturday. I have been gleefully happy! I LOVE this camera! How did I ever live without it?! I had taken 240 pictures by day’s end. I found that I didn’t have to take so many pictures of everything (I don’t even know how to program burst yet) unless the object is moving. I love that I know pretty much instantly whether or not I got the shot I was trying to get, just from the viewfinder. Amazing camera.

I still need to get a case/backpack and a tripod… I also need to get a memory card (I forgot to order one and had to sacrifice my music mem stick that I use in the car). Once I know more, I want to get other lenses for really close up shots and for really far away shots, but that will be much more research and much further down the road.

My first picture, straight out of the box, was of course, my favorite muse…

And then I had to take a self-portrait ;)…

I’ll take a page from fellow bloggers here, and let the pictures do the rest of the talking… pictures are worth a 1,000 words…

Until next time…
~nic