Tuesday 15 May 2012

Woopee - a new camera

At last we've invested in a new camera - a Canon 600D and 430xII flashgun with a new tripod.


We've been working with an old Panasonic Lumix inherited from my amazing Great-Uncle Vic - a clever electrical engineer who moved to Cowes IOW to work on flying-boats and hovercraft. He loved electrical gadgets to the end, but never left the IOW. So I take his old camera with me on my travels, hoping and believing he'll somehow get to see the places I visit.

The 600D may not be high in the Canon range, but after using point-and-shoot cameras for a few years, I'd forgotten how complex a proper SLR can be. It's a bit of a shocker to have a War-and-Peace-thick manual and to think about ISO settings, white-balance, what's the aperture up to and do I save to RAW or a jpeg?

I began my photographic career at 10 with an old Olympus PEN half-frame that gave me good results. School taught me how to use a darkroom, so I then bought a second-hand Canon FTb. I'd loved to have met the incredible japanese designers that created this camera - I dropped it down ravenes and took it all over the world with me, and now have an amazing archive of B & W photos. I graduated to an Olympus OM-2, who has been my faithful friend ever since. I even took it to Iran with me 2 years ago :



Since getting the new Canon 600D I've been wandering round the village, finding out how to use it. So far it seems pretty amazing







New House bought this camera to take white-background shots for our website - and it'll be fun expermenting!