New Images from Sunday

A very nice day here; the warm sun bringing today's high up to 3 C. It felt like it was a busy day; woke up early, did laundry, took pictures, wrote a bit, read a lot. I made fried rice with dried sea weed and mushrooms for dinner. They are a type of mushroom we don't have in Canada; at least not at the Stony Plain Safeway, but you can probably get them at T & T Market on the west end by now. I'll be danged if I can remember their name, but they are really good. If you have been reading my blog lately you are probably wondering where the new pictures from the new camera. This evening, with a horrible mind-numbing Japanese TV show about... kareoke?... on, I have quickly put together a group of pictures that illustrate the differences in my old tiny Sony T5 and my new Nikon D70s dslr (digital single reflex Lens). I have already come to love my camera, but on thing I will admit is that the learning curve is very high. This is not a camera you can just pick up and take good pictures with and I expect to be learning the camera and my own shooting style over the next couple of months. Already I can say that I am very happy with the image quality; very sharp and very colourful. The image above of me shows one of the neat tricks you can do with different types of lenses. The 30mm f1.4 lens can keep my kick-arse punk-rock powerbook in sharp focus and gracefully keep me out of focus. The other pictures I took today are taken right out my front door. As mentioned it was very nice and some of my students were sliding down a small hill in the last of the warm afternoon sun. With the dslr I can stop action - keeping it very sharp, my tiny Sony couldn't keep up and always produced motion blur. The pictures below were taken at a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second. Another reason to upgrade the camera is a quicker auto-focus. Both fast shutter speeds and fast auto-focus are a must when trying to take pictures of kids.

I will also add before ending this post that the picture of me above more-or-less accurately represents my position in front of the computer for most of November, busy with NaNoWriMo. Keep it in mind when you read my post below about NaNoWriMo by the numbers. From this point on I will be mixing pictures from both cameras. The Sony T5 has treated me well and I believe it is the perfect camera for carrying around day to day. I will most likely only mention the details of the camera when I believe it adds to the appreciation of the picture or someone asks. I do hope to post other images highlighting Nikon's advantages for the next couple of weeks as an excuse to play around with my new toy. (Too honest?) Now, its time to turn off the T.V. and go have a shower, and then read some more. Tomorrows a full week of school.