New Hobby

I am starting a new hobby: photography. I decided to upgrade my camera and purchase a d-slr camera. After doing a few hours of research, i settled on Nikon's D5000. It's a good "beginner" d-slr camera and rated third on CNET's top 5 entry-level d-slr cameras. This camera is supposed to have very good photo quality, it's fast, has an articulated LCD screen, and a nice lens kit. All good things for my "starter" camera into serious photography. :)

As an aside the #1 ranked (Canon's Rebel T2i) was about $200 more expensive and is really good for shooting HD video (not something I am into right now) and the #2 ranked Pentax's K-x did not have autofocus points in the viewfinder and was rated poorly for image stabilization.

I took a few photos of Mr. Mulligan using the auto setting. This setting allows the camera to select the exposure and aperture setting (basically it's "point-and-shoot" mode). The following are the "raw" photos without any editing (still learning how to do that...more on that in a later blog post).

(Click on the photo to enlarge.)

Such a cute little boy

Big Stretch...

I went down to Huntington Beach this past weekend to run the Surf City half marathon. I brought my new toy with me to experiment and practice. Again, these photos are without any editing.

I like how the flags are the focus point in this photo.

Photo taken from the pier at Huntington Beach

Surf City Marathon

 This photo was taken with the "Beach/Snow" setting. Apparently the exposure and aperture setting is optimized to account for the reflection of light off of the sand/snow.

Photo taken from the pier at Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach

  

Photo taken with the "silhouette" setting

Active Pets Setting

After one afternoon of playing with my new camera, i figured out i love the silhouette setting.

Silhouette Setting

Setting sun, beach, and palm trees

This is for the East Coasters: sun + beach > snow + cold

;)