New Camera…?

I’ve been having trouble with my trusty old Kodak EasyShare point & shoot camera – the lens cover doesn’t retract all the way anymore.  I use it a lot, mostly when my Canon dSLR is too much to carry around, and since we’re headed to Disney in a couple of weeks I figured it would be a good idea to replace it before then.

I bought a new camera today, but for various reasons I think I may have chosen poorly.  I’ll give it a few more days to see if it’s a learning curve issue.  I hope I just haven’t found the right settings to get decent pictures out of it yet…though as far as I can tell there really aren’t that many settings to change…

I think maybe I’m just spoiled by my dSLR.

Big Girl Eyes and Baby Girl Toes

Carrie woke up with her eyes “glued” shut with gunk this morning.  The pediatrician thankfully has walk-in hours, and she has a mild case of conjunctivitis…aka pink eye.  Sigh.  We skipped dance this afternoon, even though the pediatrician thought it would probably be fine, because I’d feel terrible if any of the other kids came down with it any closer to the recital.  But since we got four doses of drops in her eyes today, she should be good to go for school tomorrow.

Anyway, we spent the afternoon playing outside instead – well, Carrie played, Anna hung out in her stroller, and I played with camera lenses again.  Baby toes look really adorable in the sun!

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And big girls look adorable in the green, green grass!

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I really wish I could take photos this good on purpose, but luckily since I have a digital camera I can take as many as I want to increase the chances that I’ll get a few winners!

Fun with Lenses

I have had a digital SLR for more than 5 years, and I’ve barely ever used any lens on it but the one it came with.

This afternoon it was almost warm and since Anna was napping Carrie and I decided to hang out outside for a while. On a whim, I dug out the telephoto lens that I used on my old film SLR – and with the smaller aspect ratio of the digital camera, it winds up being a super telephoto lens.

This is one of my favorite shots from the afternoon:

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I think I need to play with my camera and my (very) small lens collection, because this is the sort of photo I’d like to be able to take on purpose, and often.

The Problem with Digital Cameras…

OK, it’s really bad when you discover that you haven’t ordered any pictures in 10.5 months…luckily Ofoto Kodak Gallery is having a 10¢ print sale right now! (Though what exactly I’m going to do with 429 prints is beyond me. I haven’t even put the pictures of the first three years of Carrie’s life in an album, I’m not sure why I felt the need to have actual physical prints of this last year.)

Obsessing

We’re going on a big family vacation with Denis’ side this summer, to Florida – mainly Disney, although we plan to hit Sea World and a couple of other places while we’re there. Even though I still have more than three months to plan, I’m starting to think about various things we’ll need to bring and how we’re going to get everyone and everything through the airport.

My biggest concern at the moment is cameras. We have three cameras we use on a somewhat regular basis: the digital SLR, a digital point-and-shoot, and a digital video camera. I’m OK with leaving the video camera home as we don’t use it that much anyway, my real dilemma is which still camera to bring. I really adore my digital SLR, and don’t really want to leave home without it, but I’m feeling like it would be a hassle to carry it through the parks. Plus I imagine my worry about valuable things that could get lost should probably be more focused on the munckin than a camera. (To that end, I’m thinking I might get one of these for her. Do you think that’s too paranoid?)

The pros of the digital point-and-shoot are that it’s small, takes decent pictures (especially outdoors, where we’ll mostly be) and can also take small video snippets. The cons? It’s not my digital SLR.

The pros of the SLR are that it takes fabulous pictures, has a better flash, and has interchangeable lenses. The cons? It’s big, heavy, has extra lenses, and doesn’t take video.

The choice is clear, right? So why am I obsessing? Besides, if I bring the little camera, I can buy one of these nifty bags (in lime green, of course!) and stick the camera right in that handy-dandy side pocket. And I’ve never been known to pass up a chance to buy a new bag…

flickr?

I’m playing around with flickr, because everyone else seems to be using it. I’m trying to decide if I really want yet another place that I’m storing images, or if I should just keep uploading things to my own server space. Anyone have any fabulous reasons for using it? It does seem neat, and I could theoretically change my header images to be a flickr banner and display recent images…which is what I’d always intended to do but never got around to writing code for.

OhmygodIwantone!

I so want the new Canon Digital Rebel. Imagine: a digital SLR which would work with all of my current lenses and filters, and my external flash. Drool…oh, sorry. I actually got to play with one at the camera store in the mall, and had to physically restrain myself from pulling out the credit card right then and there.

Now, I just need to win the lottery. Actually, as digital SLRs go, this one is priced quite reasonably. Maybe Santa will read this and wrap it up as a combo Birthday/Christmas present? And deliver it early – like tomorrow? OK, I won’t hold my breath!

But just imagine what fantastic pictures I could capture…of my knitting, and my puppies, and…well, other stuff I can’t think of right now, too!

…And Again!

I have another Picture of the Day!

So let’s see, this weekend (three days for me – I took Friday as vacation) consisted of knitting, buying knitting supplies, and watching football. Ahhh. I love fall. I’m starting Christmas gifts now, which I can’t put up pictures of, because the majority of the people I’m making things for read my blog on occasion. Oh, well. Let’s just say that I bought a significant quantity of yarn over the weekend, all of which is destined for gifties. My living room looked like a yarn shop by the time I brought in all of the bags!

Picture of the Day

Check it out – my picture is Picture of the Day today! This would be much more exciting if I didn’t work on the project, but it’s still neat. And no, I’m not the person who does the image approval (thank goodness – I wouldn’t want that part of the job!) so it’s not like I hard-coded my image in there or anything. :) <shameless plug> Go on, upload some pictures – you know you want to! It’s a contest, besides, so if you don’t work for Kodak you have a chance to win neat stuff, like digital cameras and Ofoto credits. </shameless plug>