The Wayward Celt

When I was out in Denver with Kally and Debby, Kally was gracious enough to allow me to play with her Nikon DSLR. It had been a very long time since I’d used an SLR of any type, digital or analog. Over the course of that weekend, I solidified the need to upgrade my old Pentax K1000 and get into the world of digital SLR photography where I could control ISO, shutter speed, focus, and aperture settings manually.

I realized, after having had opportunity to actually use a DSLR for an extended time, that I truly missed more serious photography. While my Pentax was no slouch, I’d long abandoned it for the ease of m compact digital Powershot SD1000; the cost and time of processing colour film just wasn’t a priority. Realizing the ease of processing a digital shot, I’d long been sold on the DSLR for my needs and wants.  Take into consideration that film is a dying media, I do feel bad that I am contributing to that factor, but I simply can not deny that going digital makes it VERY easy to adjust my settings on the fly to get the image I want, without ‘educated guessing’ through an entire roll, only to get one good shot. No, digital allows me to educated guess, see the results, adjust on the fly, and get the shot in far fewer shutter releases and with much greater results than ever before.

So, yes, I was convinced years ago that I wanted a DSLR of my very own, and that weekend in early December solidified that I needed a DSLR… Fast forward to the end of 2010 and through the gracious selflessness of my wife, I was finally able to pick up the toy I’ve been longing for since I’d first learned of DSLRs. I pulled the trigger on a Canon EOS 60D.

It was a tough call between the Nikon D700, the Canon EOS 7D, and the 60D. I used a number of resources to help me in deciding (the main one being http://www.dpreview.com). For me, the deciding factors really came down to cost, personal preference, and knowing exactly how much I really needed versus wanted. While the 60D does have superior video that I’ll likely not be using, the cost of the 7D and slight image improvement really didn’t justify making that jump. The Nikon is a brilliant camera as well, but I will admit to being a devoted Canon fan and am willing to stick with a company who has treated me well previously when contacting customer service, as well as a company that consistently puts out top of the market products.

So now I get to learn a new camera platform, and begin dusting off those old exposure skills I built up in high school. Luckily aperture/shutter speed/ISO combinations haven’t changed in the interceding years and are coming back to me much like riding a bicycle.

You’ve already seen a few pictures from the new camera posted here and on FB… which I will caveat by noting these are shots taken prior to really having learned the features and settings available with the Canon EOS 60D and are also completely unedited/untouched. I am hoping that as I learn more, you will see a decided shift in quality of my posted images here. In the meantime, I’ll add a few more shots below as baselines with which to gauge my own improvement.