Images by John 'K'

After years of taking pictures with some relatively simple (and cheap) digital cameras, I was finally convinced to move to the world of digital SLR photography at the weekend. Since moving to America and having my youngest get involved in high school basketball I’ve experienced first hand the inadequacies of point and click digital photography; it really can’t cope with low light action shots. A trip into Costco this past weekend had me faced with 2 package deals that might help address this issue – one from Canon and one from Nikon, and after some thought (as these things while at a good price still aren’t cheap), I took the plunge and went for the Nikon deal as an ‘early Christmas present’.

 

I used to be all for SLR photography when I was younger, but clearly the passing of time has seen a lot of my old photography knowledge purged from my head, as faced with all the options on the camera, my first thought was "HELP", but I’m determined to get the best out of this thing. The manual and on-line tutorial show so many possibilities – options and controls for taking some really cool pictures – that I’m gonna sit down, read and re-read the thing until I get it lodged in my head.

 

Anyway – we popped up to Mount Diablo and took it for a trial run on Sunday – it was hazy after the recent rain, so we weren’t able to see too far into the distance (so no views of San Francisco), but I had a play anyway and have posted some of the results. I’m particularly impressed with the performance of the telephoto lens that came as part of the package – the shot of the bird in the distance was with me holding the camera (no tripod) and tracking the bird on full zoom (to the naked eye the bird was a tiny dot in the distance).

 

Watch for more pics form me as I get used to using this new ‘toy’.