Man, it's weird dealing with an old camera! I couldn't just hold the shutter button halfway down to make sure it was focused. I had to manually focus the darn thing. And then if Grace moved, I had to refocus all over again.
There was no automatic film advance! When I took a photo of Grace, I had to remember to advance the film. There were a couple of photos I saw through the viewfinder that I missed out on because I had forgotten the advance the film.
Plus as I mentioned before, that sucker is heavy. I have no idea how I carried it for ten days throughout Italy, from Rome to Assisi to Florence to Padua to Venice to Milan, back in high school. And it's weird to have to squint through the viewfinder instead of just looking at the LCD screen on the back. Actually that isn't too weird for me because I have been known to use the digital viewfinder on my digital camera lately when the sun's been too strong to see the photo on the LCD screen.
I also began to figure the camera all out again. I was inside playing around with it last night, but for some reason I could only set the aperture so wide, which wasn't going to be enough for the low indoor light. I couldn't figure out why the dial wouldn't move any farther!
While I was playing with it outside, I remembered I needed to play with the shutter speed as well! How amazing! So when I slowed down the shutter speed, I could open up the aperture a wee bit more to get more light!
You know, I never did said I was the fastest bunny in the race.
Playing with my SLR camera all day yesterday has just reinforced my desire for a digital SLR. But I can't decide what I want to do. Should I go in with an entry-level one and get the lenses to go with it and upgrade in a few years to a pretty good DSLR (and the lenses will work for the newer one too), or should I just suck it up and go with a decent model at the outset? Money isn't going to be a huge issue since we're most likely going to make a killing on the house. In a way, I want to start out with the entry-level DSLR just in case I don't use it as much as I think I am going to, and then I won't feel guilty for spending so much money. At the same time, maybe I'll find myself using the DSLR all the damn time and I'll be wishing I had bought the decent one.
Grrrr. Decisions, decisions.
And then my husband emails me and tells me I can go ahead and buy myself a new camera, but I might have to give up the expensive "you've done a great job on deployment" present he'd decided on! How mean can you get? Now I almost don't want the camera because I'm so curious as to what Kurt could possibly have come up with as a present for me. I don't really have expensive tastes (although I will never say no to a pretty designer handbag -- but "pretty" is key), and I am not really one for jewelry. I spent $50 on the gold necklace I am wearing now, and that's about the price level I am comfortable in regarding jewelry.
Most of the jewelry I wear, I wear day in and day out. My earrings only come out of my ear to be cleaned, which means they can stay in there for months at a time. Once I put on a particular necklace, I wear it until I buy a new one in a couple of years. I have three watches that I switch between, one of which is a Breast Cancer Awareness pink watch by Guess that was on sale at the Navy Exchange in October of last year. I have the four rings I wear every day -- my wedding set (that's two rings) on my left hand, and on my right, my college graduation ring and a ring this boy gave me when I was 14. That is actually a man's ring, but having humongous sausage fingers allows me to wear it on my right middle finger, and I've gotten a ton of compliments on it. About the only jewelry I wear only part of the time are toe rings in the summer time. Even those I tend to leave on all damn summer.
So what in the world could my husband buy me that would be expensive that I would want? Besides a digital SLR, of course, because I came up with this after he told me he was getting me a present.
I'm dying to find out! I guess I'll find out in exactly two months from today when my husband returns home.
TWO MONTHS!! YAY!