New Camera Fun-ness

Well if you didn't read my last post, this past Thursday I got a new camera. It's a Nikon dSLR and it's all mine. No more making my dad share his camera with me; I'm sure he'll be very glad to get his back.

So far one thing that is the main difference between this Nikon and my dad's Olympus is the focusing on the lens. The Olympus was mostly an autofocus lens with some minor focus. So it would focus and then there was a ring I could turn that would slightly change the focusing, but it never seemed like much. Now my Nikon lens has full manual focusing, which is awesome! But I am out of practice so unfortunately quite a few pictures I took today didn't have the focusing right.
Then obviously things like the menus and button layouts are different, but that's no big deal. I will give Olympus props for having probably the most through camera manual ever. It's about four times the size of my Nikon one and has way more explanations of pretty much everything on the camera.

Today I went to another park(what a surprise). I always feel silly going to a populated area by myself with my camera, so I usually stick to nature trails in parks where there are fewer people. Today I used manual mode on my camera with manual focus. Which of course doing that leads to some bad shots, but it's fun and good practice so I do it anyway. Now here are some of the things I found on my walk:

[I took quite a few shots of this grassy stuff. It took me a few tries to get the focusing right. Partly because I was sitting on some funky hill and swatting bugs off me every two seconds... along with the whole new camera thing]

[A fly]

[I think this picture is a bit overwhelming and therefore not that great. What do you think?]

[A stump, I had to take a picture of it]

[Thoughts on this one too...I'm not sure how I feel about the harsh sunlight]

[Some creepy, old, abandoned building.]

[Had some fun with the reflections in this lake]

So there you have it, some of my first pictures with my new camera. I am very thrilled with it so far and I think it is going to be a fabulous camera. Too bad I can't afford all the other lenses and sweet accessories I want yet.

For serious I will hopefully have some new subjects soon. I need to stop being a chicken and go into populated areas, like downtown Grand Rapids, and find something new to photograph. Including people...