First impressions - boy do I suck!

So with much giddiness, I charged up the battery on my new camera, attached the lens, and headed out to give her a trial run. A little league game was going on in the park about a block from my home, so I figured it would be a good chance to snap some action shots and see how I did.

Not so bueno. It was twilight at the time, so the field wasn't lit terribly well. I think would have done better under the full lights of the park with it darker outside. I took some shots from about 100-200 feet away that just came out kinda fuzzy. Actually a couple were pretty decent, but not the quality I was hoping for. Granted, it is a cheaper lens - I knew that going into it. The motion shots didn't come out at all. Naive me thought that you could just push the button and capture the moment. Not so much. Some basic research has led me to believe that I may have to take the camera off of its automatic settings for those shots.

What I was really impressed with, surprisingly enough, was the close in photos. When shooting targets 5-20 years away, the shots were actually better than I thought they would be. I took one picture of third base that I thought came out really well, despite the poor lighting.












Back at home, my wife asked me to take a few photos of our cat that turned out really good as well. So the next day I decided I'd take some close ups of the dog at the park in some natural sunlight.

For the dog photos, I took the camera off of the Green (automatic) setting (gasp!). Based on a recommendation I saw on the Pentax forums, I switched over to "Aperture Sensitive" mode, then adjusted the aperture to the lowest level it would go - which I think was around 4.0 or 4.5

As you can see, the dog shots had a lot more brightness and color to them. Granted, it was also the middle of the day - and I was only about 10-feet away. Still, I was very happy with how they turned out!

Will try again tomorrow and report back!

First lens - DA 50-200

Much to my surprise, my first lens arrived today. I went with the Pentax DA 50-200mm. I had actually received several excellent recommendations for a first lens. The choice to go with the 50-200 was based on several factors. First of all, it was (relatively) inexpensive at $200. Given the cat situation I described before, I was more or less looking for a versatile lens that would at least let me learn the camera before I upgrade to a lens of better quality.

The 50-200 will limit my ability to take portrait and still life photos, as it's a basic telephoto lens. But in the short term, what I really need is to be able to take photos of my wife's upcoming Ironman race. From what I've read, I believe the lens will give me the reach I need to take some pretty good shots.

The other area where I plan to take the majority of my photos is in and around airports. As an aviation enthusiast and private pilot, this is probably the most promising area for my photography to take off (no pun intended).

Camera is scheduled to arrive tomorrow - can't wait to hook her up!

New camera on the way...

Instead of starting out this blog with some boring, self-absorbed introduction to myself, I figured I'd just start typing about photography and let the rest just sort of find its own way in here. So here goes...

After some fairly extensive research, I purchased a new DSLR camera - a Pentax k20d.

I had been thinking of taking up photography as a hobby for some time. More on that later. I had been eye-balling the Nikon D90 as it seems to be the popular model these days, along with various Sony and Canon cameras.

The problem is that in September of this year, one of my cats was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to have a racquetball sized tumor pulled out of him. Surgery costs, as well as chemo meant we had to buckle down financially, canceling a cruise we were schedule to take over Thanksgiving. Again, a subject I'll tackle in greater detail later.

I work for HSN (Home Shopping Network) and every now and then we'd have a decent entry-level DSLR on our site - but usually too entry level for my tastes. I wanted a camera I could grow into, as opposed to growing out of.

Then one day I happened to search "SLR" on our site and low and behold, the k20d popped up (body only). I had never heard of Pentax, but after a few minutes of research, realized what a strong brand it was, if not necessarily a trendy one. My decision to purchase the k20d was based on several factors, in this order of importance:

1) Employee discount: Was able to get the camera body for $744 after taxes and S&H ... just a few dollars more than the cheapest available online

2) Financing: By applying for my company's card, I was able to get no interest/no-payments until March. This was vital as with the cat being sick, there was no way I could justify the expense at this point in time

3) Online reviews: Nearly every review was overwhelmingly positive. People were frank about the negatives, but none were things that bothered me that much. The D90 has HD video capability, but I'm not really buying the camera to take videos. Some complained about it being heavy and some grip characteristics, but being my first SLR, I'm not too worried. The Live View mode doesn't get high marks, but again, I don't personally find this too important. What was important, however, was...

4) Picture quality: At 14-megapixels, the k20d gets stellar marks for picture quality. Owners rave about the fantastic photo quality for a sub $1k camera. Most reviews of the camera I read described it as being of semi-professional quality. Browsing photo galleries posted by k20d

owners, it became clear that the camera is capable of simply amazing photos (with the right lense and experience of course).

So as of right now, the camera is on its way. Should be here on 10/7 (tomorrow). I'm incredibly excited to start digging into it. In fact, I've spent the past week reading the owner's manual online. What's become abundantly clear is that I have a lot to learn, and will most likely be setting everything to "automatic" until I can figure out what ISO, apeture and everything else actually is.

As I mentioned, I purchased only the camera body (since they didn't offer one with a lense). I've also purchased a lense to start out with, but I'll post more about that tomorrow.

Thanks for reading my blog - can't wait to start sharing some photos!