I have always loved to take pictures. I am not really very good at it, but I enjoy it, and have been blessed with good SLRs and lenses. When I was in college in 1990 I had to graduate from a vintage 1985 Ricoh 35 mm point-n-shoot (which still works!!) to an SLR, so my friend taught me how to use the one my dad handed-down to me (a beautiful 1969, Hong Kong-purchased, Minolta SRT-101 with a gaping Minolta Rokkor 1:1.2 lens, which I still have and works wondefully). Here is an example of bracketing we did, Matt of course being the doleful subject he always was:
Here is one I took at the top of South Mountain with him on a Geology field trip, he had said "just stop fiddling and take a picture, it won't bite you".:
And here is one I took when we were getting ready to head out on the town, for an, errrr, festive occasion around 2001:
In grad school I needed something I had to think less about, just focus, so I bought a nice Nikon. I got some great shots when out the field over the years, both then and while working with ExxonMobil. Here is one in Oman of a basket weaver in Nizwa (yes, I asked his permission in case he was afraid the camera would steal his soul):
Drawback to both these cameras: flash is a massive external monster. The Nikon was stolen from my boyfriend-at-the-time's truck. Oh well.
I am on my second digital camera. My first one I won at work when I worked at ExxonMobil as a Safety Award, whee! It was cheap-assed thing and took ok pictures for the time (2001) and functioned as a webcam, etc. Then one of the dogs ate it. Or most of it. Oh well.
So I bought a Canon PowerShot S500 Digital ELPH. A very well-rated camera at the time, probably around 2003.
I HATE IT.
It is SLOW to focus. It is slow to save. The flash is too powerful and overwhelms the image, washing it out. It was not a cheap camera. But there are contemporaries that that work better. Here is an example of why I hate it:
I came home today and found that one of my dogs had grabbed a clean toy off the dryer and had been eating a flower from a vase the cats had knocked over, evidenced by pollen on his face. Time for a picture and a blog post of "Daddy I did not do anything! I love you!"
Not so. Here are all the pictures I had to try to take with the Canon before I just gave the fuck up:
It is pretty good for keeping in your pocket for pix at Mardi Gras like this:
