A New Toy!

Last Sunday, Mr. Mouse and I had our best babysitter over with her daughter while we went out to the city.  The souricettes had fun.  So did we.  Mr. Mouse took me to the famous B&H store.  That place is really big and intimidating! And they have this system that makes the whole place look like a cross between an airport and a mail sorting facility.  You browse the store and choose what you want but then you have to go order it at the counter. At the counter they enter it into the system.  Then a bin shows up with everything and they check that everything is there before sending the bin off again and giving you a bill.  Repeat at each counter you need to go to (and each time, they take your bill and give you a new, updated one).  When you’re ready to go, you go pay and then you go pick up your stuff.  It seems to work really well but wow…

And the result is : a new camera! I got a Canon Rebel T3i.  It came with a lens. 18-55mm.  And then they had a special on the entry level telephoto lens so I got that too : 55-250mm.  I hardly looked at the more expensive cameras because they just weren’t going to happen.  Not 3000$.  Nope. Not happening. I considered the Nikon 5100 too but they didn’t have any kits with the lens anymore and buying separately would have cost more.

Mr. Mouse was very antsy Sunday evening because I wasn’t using the camera.  I started with the manual.  Besides, the battery needed to be charged. I did take a couple shots on Monday.  Just to try it out.  And I’ve been trying to spend more time with it.  It’s hard.  Outside has been a bit colder than what I like for photography and souricette 2 isn’t very cooperative.  I set up a spot to photograph her and she would NOT cooperate.  I really want to work on this a little more.  With the point and shoot, I felt like I had done as much as I could.  Now, I feel like I still have so so much to learn to get good shots.  I see more books in my future.  I’ve been reading Bryan Peterson (he made me discover aperture priority mode which I love) and Jim Miotke (I have more of his coming soon).  Any other suggestions?

I’m also figuring out the software that came with my camera.  I’ve been shooting raw and I like the adjustments I can make before saving to jpg.  More creative work will still need Gimp but I’m hoping I’ll need it less.

Of the pictures I took this week, the only adjustments I did were to play with the white balance and photo colour style in the Canon software.  I really like this raw format for adjusting the photo… Top picture was supposed to be my very very first picture with the camera :

But it wasn’t exciting enough.  It’s fruit.  I prefer the nut I put up there instead.  She looks as gleeful as I felt when I got the camera!  Oh, I tried out spot metering on that one and metered off the piece of fabric.  That’s why the window is so bright.

Ok, next. More fruit.  Eh, my first try with the camera involved only fruit.  I was obsessed with aperture priority mode.  I wanted to work with the biggest aperture I could get (smallest number) because I wanted the most shallow depth of field that I could.

Oh, you know what? I should seriously crop this one to make that apple stand out…

And then, uncooperative souricette 2. She’s angry because I want her to play with the blocks that I set up just for her… So yeah, red face is a consequence of screaming, not me doing something weird to the colour…

And finally, I haven’t been doing nothing this week.  I did have tasks and I’m almost done with them.  Small project : haircut for souricette 1.  Done.  Project for future business : finish that painting I started.  Will do Saturday afternoon.  Big project : finish pants and top outfit for souricette 2 (it’s a bit big but she’ll grow into it). Here it is!

About deuxsouriceaux

Creative mommy at home to two wonderful little girls, trying to juggle family, sewing, exercise, family, knitting, photography, and did I mention family?