My camera

When it comes to sleeping Jack is having a horrible week, so I'm getting to write a lot of posts. Every night he wakes up a couple of times and is super unhappy. Moments ago, I couldn't get him to stop crying, so now we are watching Hippo Noodles and he's calmed down. I'm writing a post and he's watching this strange video that we also use to use to get Ben to stop crying. I love having two monitors for our computer.

My friend Heather's dad posted a comment on my blog about my camera, wondering if I had a better one that him. Heather's dad, Robin, takes amazing pictures, but I wanted to answer his question about my camera. I'm sure a few more of you might want to know.

Chad has always loved photography. Infact, his dream job would be to be a photograher. Chad especially loves taking pictures of nature and landscapes. For years he's wanted to buy a digital camera, but I wouldn't let him (mean, huh?).

I've always loved photography as well, but never took the time to learn much about it. I especially love pictures of people. Another thing I love to take pictures of is food, which was the first reason we bought a digital camera.

So, what kind of camera do I have? It's a Nikon D80. We chose Nikon because we already had a Nikon SLR and we could use the lenses from that camera on our new digital camera. Turns out that I rarely ever use the old lenses. I almost always use one lens in particular that I bought to go with the digital camera. It's a 50 mm 1.4 lens. It's a prime lens which means you can't zoom in with it, but because it's a prime lens it has amazing clarity. Because of the aperature this lense allows you can get pretty good pictures in low light, which is awesome because I generally don't like using a flash. You also get pictures that have awesome bokeh (blurry backgrounds).

I got my camera a year and a half ago. First I actually had a Nikon D40, but I upgraded to a D80 because the 50 mm 1.4 lens didn't work on the D40. I didn't know a whole heck of a lot about photography before I got a digital camera, but I've learn a lot over the past year. And I still have soooooooooooooo much to learn. One thing that I do know is that I love it, and I love the instant gratification you get from digital cameras. I often feel like I'm a cheater, that I only do a good job taking pictures because I have a nice digital camera, but it's so nice to be able to take a picture figure out what is wrong with it and then make adjustments to fix it right then.

One more thing, just about every professional photographer edits their photos. I'm not a professional, but I edit a lot of mine. I use to do it in Photoshop, but I've recently fallen in love with Lightroom, thanks to Chad's friend Kevin.

If you buy a nice Digital SLR, don't use the AUTO mode. If you are going to spend a big chunk of change on a camera, experiment with it. If you're afraid, take a class. And then take a billion pictures and delete the ones you don't like.

One last thing, I wanted to say thank you to every one who has posted compliments about the pictures I take. And thank you to everyone who has asked me to take pictures for them. It means a lot!