So thanks to the incredible kindness and generosity of my dear bloggy friend Ally, I have checked off half of my first "25 in 25" item: Acquire a DSLR camera. (Check out Ally's post here for more on that — or if you don't wanna click over, suffice to say that she is just freaking awesome.) So now I'm trying to learn how to use it. I've already advanced past the auto settings, thanks to a ton of online tutorials, and am trying to shoot in aperture-priority and shutter-priority modes as much as I can.
So I was going to post a ton of photos illustrating the cool things I'm figuring out. But I shot them in RAW format, and I didn't realize that Photoshop can't read RAW files. It's already pretty close to my bedtime (ha) so I guess that'll have to wait until tomorrow or Wednesday. But in the meantime, here's one of Spazzy that I happened to shoot in JPG. How awesome is this detail?!
Here's the camera. It's a Nikon D3000 and I love it so much. So, so, so very much. It's awesome. I'm geeking out. I've already had to stop myself several times from ordering too many accessories, telling myself to keep it to the bare minimum — a remote, a tripod that will hold it (because my tripod is cheap and flimsy), a spare battery, a snap-on wide-angle lens (which is cool enough to deserve its own post), a lens brush, and a camera bag big enough to hold it all. I've also named her. May I introduce you to Nellie:
I thought it was a fun name, because when she does something I'm not expecting (which, given my novice status, is quite often) I can say, "Whoaaaa, Nellie!" Plus it sounds kind of like Ally, so it's a nice reminder of my friend's generosity :)
Do you shoot with a DSLR? What was the hardest thing for you to figure out?
