Tuesday, 30 Jun 2009

Oh boy, another picture of a cat. But wait! It's a picture of a cat taken with a different camera. Yes -- that's right!

I've been pretty happy with my Nikon D70 for the past five years -- at least as far as taking pictures goes. What I've been less pleased about is the way it started (a couple of years ago) telling me 'CHA' or 'FMT' or '-E-' when there was definitely a formatted, perfectly fine CF card in the camera. Usually I could just eject the card and put it back in (once or twice or three times), but it was definitely not ideal for those occasion when I was trying to capture something fleeting.

Oh, and also? It liked to corrupt files on a whim. I'm pretty sure I've lost thousands of high-res images from cards that were suddenly unreadable or garbled (even with regular backing-up -- I take a lot of photos). Reformatting would fix the problem, but it was always a bit Russian-roulette-y as far as when the camera was going to snap. I tried a new CF card; I tried updating the firmware -- no luck.

So, today Rob and I went to National Camera Exchange (oh, Rob's in town, did I mention?), and he bought me a refurbished D200 body. It's an amazing gift. A slightly embarrassingly generous gift, in fact. I'm not really sure how to properly say thanks enough, but maybe if I tell the internet about what a thoughtful, super guy he is, that might be a start.

I told Rob that having a new camera body was a bit like having new (under)pants: I'm really excited about it, but odds are that nobody else will be able to tell (since the lenses make the biggest difference). So I'm surprised by the extent to which I CAN tell. It definitely is a much different experience as far as photo-taking goes; things just look better through this camera. And I feel like I can see a difference in the photos as well, although it might be all in my head.

Anyway, I'm determined to actually sit down and read the manual to this one. I tend to learn things as I need them, but I have a feeling this camera does a lot that I don't yet even realize I need. Plus, it always annoys Rob when he asks me what something does on one of my gadgets and I don't know. I figure I owe it to him to make an effort this time!

So, lets see... 'Taking a Photo'... oh, removing the lens cap makes a difference?