Going Digital

For my birthday yesterday, my wife surprised me with a new Canon Digital Rebel XT camera. Last winter, I took a community education class on photography. At the time, I bought a fairly inexpensive film camera (Minolta Maxxum 50). It's a nice camera for the beginner or novice as it has good automatic features, plus the ability to adjust most settings manually.

But as I've been slowing getting more into photography, it's been frustrating for me to have to keep track of my shutter and aperture settings for each shot I took, and then remember to match up those settings when I finally got the photos back from the processor. It's difficult to learn about the effect of various settings when you can't see the results immediately.

So, I've been casually looking at digital cameras for a while. A good friend of mine had a Canon at one of my son's baseball tournaments, and he praised the camera. I was impressed with the quality of the shots he's taken.

I wasn't ready to spend the money on one just yet, but my wife made a visit to our local photography shop (Photographx Unlimited) and brought home the Canon.

I haven't had a chance to take many shots with it yet, but I am impressed with its capabilities. Plus, I love that data about each shot is captured with the shot. I never again will have to write down my shutter speed or aperture settings as that data is captured with the shot. The quality of the shots is unbelievable - better than any digital photos I've ever seen.

I'm really excited about getting to know this camera and capturing some great shots with it.