Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I Can See Again



My wife has a habit of giving me really fabulous birthday gifts. She gave me the computer that I'm using to write these words.

This year she gave me a new camera. A real digital camera. Wow. It's a nice machine.

For one thing, it takes a picture when you press the goddamn shutter release, not three seconds later. For another, you look through a viewfinder, not at a small screen on the back the camera. It's light as a feather. It's a Canon, so I reckon the glass and the optics of the lens are also pretty damn good. Oh yeah, my girl got me a nice zoom lens, too. If you take it off and look inside the camera, it's all brushed metal, gleaming chrome and mirrors in there. Ooooh.

I almost feel bad thinking about how much abuse it's going to suffer at my hands. I am going to enjoy shooting this thing to death.

One thing: it's a Canon Rebel. Hee he. It makes me think of Billy Idol.

The lens is a wide angle. When I looked through it for the first time, I saw the world as I did through my first real cameras. (Which were Canons, too.) It was like being struck with sight. Suddenly I remembered what people and rooms and nighttime are supposed to look like through a camera. All those years ago, I developed my way of looking at the world with a wide-angle lens and Kodak Tri-X black and white film. But for the past ten years or so, I've been shooting these dinky digital point-and-shoots, with their "normal" lenses and shutter lags and crappy optics.

What a silly man I have been.

So here's the first pictures I made with my new camera. Now I've gotta go. I have a lot of work to do.

5 comments:

Ed Ward said...

This can't be anything but good news. Can't wait for the pix to come!

pat said...

Thanks, Ed. Any photo requests from Vienna?

Ed Ward said...

Requests? Never been there. Shoot what you see. That'll do me til I can visit.

Gavin said...

I do believe that's Pat's own street!

What a great present--I eagerly look forward to its photographic fruit.

Snooker said...

That really is an awesome present.
I think that you are really going to enjoy it!

My sweetie got me a decent digital SLR for my birthday in January. Since that time I've popped the shutter over 6,000 times.