I've been playing around with the idea of buying a digital SLR camera for quite some time. I love the high-zoom Kodak digital camera I have, but I really want an SLR. There is so much you can do with an SLR that you can't really do with a point-and-shoot. My current camera does have a manual mode, but it isn't the same.

I miss my SLR. But it's a film camera!! I would have to wait to get the film developed! I wouldn't have instant gratification! I wouldn't be able to delete my crappy photos and keep only the best!

Last night I was on the phone with J for quite some time talking about it. She has a Nikon D-70, I believe, and my father has both a Nikon D-200 and a D-100. Both she and my father love their Nikons. I have a feeling that if I bought a Canon, my father would disown me.

J had run into a woman at her daughter's soccer practice who was using a Canon, so she asked her, on my behalf, why she'd chosen the Canon over the Nikon. So that's how we ended up chatting about cameras for so long last night.

That lit a fire under my bum to go find my SLR. I knew it was somewhere in the house since I would never store sensitive equipment in the garage, but there are so many nooks and crannies in my house filled with just so much JUNK that it took me a while.

But voila! I found it!!

See?? Here is my baby:

My father gave me this camera while I was in high school. He didn't give me much instruction on it, other than how to work the light meter. That is the only automatic thing on this camera. It has a manual film advance, manual film rewind, manual focusing, manual aperture setting, manual everything. But I figured it out pretty quickly.

I took this camera with me to Italy my senior year in high school. It was a school trip, and my parents allowed me to go as my graduation present. Three teachers got together and took their respective classes -- English, Art History, and Photography. I was a TA for the English teacher, which is how I got to go.

I think some of the photography students were a bit put out that I had a better camera than they did. But I didn't know anything about cameras then, not really. When the camera slipped off the door handle of a restroom and fell to the ground, thereby acquiring the dents that are clearly visible above the Minolta logo, I thought I had shattered the lens. I freaked out! Lenses are not cheap!! The photography students laughed at me and explained I'd just shattered the filter.

WHEW.

They also told me at one point that I didn't have enough light for a particular photo that I wanted to take in Santa Croce in Florence. I just smiled and nodded at them.

This was the photo I didn't have enough light for:

I think it turned out fairly well. Of all the photos I've taken, this is my absolute favorite.

Also, I can't help but to share one more photo with you. This is my favorite photo of my father and me when I was a child:

Now isn't that just too cute??? And yes, that is my dad's old Minolta SLR in his hands, only before I dented it. I think that was about 1980, so I was about a year and a half old. Maybe it was 1981 and I was two. It wasn't any later than that, for sure.

I noticed I have taken only ten photos on this roll of film in the Minolta. I guess I'll have to go out and take some photos and send them in for developing. Maybe that's what Grace and I will do today -- go outside and take photos.

This sucker is HEAVY, though! I weighed it today, and it comes out to 2� pounds! I guess I was stronger in high school.