I'm always tickled when people ask me about my photography and camera gear. I love taking photos, I take millions, and I'm always trying to improve my skills, so I take it as a wonderful compliment. In light of recent questions I thought I'd put together some posts about my camera gear, what adjustments I make to my photos (editing etc) and my methods for posting them online in case it helps anyone. Here's the first instalment - about my camera gear.
My current camera is a Nikon D90 and I bought it online
here. Its my second Nikon DSLR (my first was a D50), and for those of you who don't quite understand what that means I found a great description and comparison of SLR cameras
here. If I had one piece of advice to improve your photography it's this, if you can afford it buy an SLR. The prices are coming down all the time and there are always second hand bargains around. And for those of you intimidated by these cameras let me tell you that despite taking photography as a subject at art school I always use the automatic settings. I'm always in a hurry and they work just fine for me. I know shock horror! For those of you who are happy with your own camera I'll include some tips for shooting and editing with compact cameras (like our Canon Ixus) in later instalments.
Though my camera is quite bulky and not as easy to carry around the place as our compact camera I do find myself carting it along most places. At the end of the day its worth the inconvenience to me to have better quality photos. I found out this year when I went shopping for a new lens that the standard 18-50mm lens which comes on the Nikon is actually a great lens. It has a really close focus capability so I can get up close without having to drag my bulky macro along all the time but also goes out wide enough to take landscapes in the next second.
Saying that though I do love my macro and its one of the great things about an SLR that you can swap lenses depending on what you want to photograph. My lens is a Tamron 90mm Macro and I got it for a birthday/xmas present a couple of years ago. A macro lens brings the magical miniature worlds of flowers and textures into tight focus and gives great 'bokeh', that wonderful blurriness you see in the background of some photos. Its lots of fun and great for flower photography.
I'm also saving up for a cheap zoom so I can take photos of the birdie visitors to my garden. Maybe next birthday ;-)
To show you the difference between lenses I took some photos of the same scene with both, macro first and 18-50mm second. These photos have been tweaked and cropped using the basic iPhoto program on a Mac, but I'll save the info on that and some tips for shooting and uploading for another post.
