DG Site Updates: 2007 Photo Contest... What camera did you use?, 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
I don't think I could have learnt anything about my camera without reading the manual, after having used a point and shoot compact for 2.5 years I was daunted! The compact I thought in the first place was difficult enough, lol, little did I know what was coming!

For starters, you can't see the pic on the monitor to take the picture, only AFTER. You have to go back to that old-fashioned way of looking through the viewfinder, when I first got it in my hands I was in a cold sweat, nearly returned it, I had never used any type of SLR before.

Thankfully the viewdinder magnifies what you are looking at quite well, but I would say you still need good eyesight, I am still blessed with that even though I am slowly falling to bits, lol. There are however attachments to make viewing even more magnified if anyone is considering this.

I decided that I was NOT going to go backwards, the brain cells would have to grow, that they did and I now wouldn't like to use anything else. This camera is a daily attachment to me, I take it with me when I do my first daily rounds in the garden (hung around my neck, it doesn't feel heavy that way), I now pop up the road to a field to see what birds I can find before I return indoors, I can spend at least an hour with my camera before going inside but just now the weather isn't allowing much.

It has given me the incentive to get much needed exercise, something I can do very little of because of a road traffic accident. It has become a continuation of my garden, as have the insects which visit my garden and which I take pics of. My previous camera was the beginning of this extended joy in my life, but had become exhausted and limited in it's capabilities. I feel so lucky to have been given this camera, my life is enriched beyond any expensive holidays or costly but useless 'objects'.

Yes, I agree with your wise words tombaak

" I think that unfortunately you are overestimating our wealth and underestimating our talent, or drive to take good photos."

I hold no grudges, I try to be forgiving, I try to understand where others are coming from, it's not always easy but we can learn.

I just love to see all these wonderful pics coming up again, each and every one is precious to the taker, and a joy to view by others. It's great to hear the stories behind the pics, we who took them know just how lucky we each felt when we go them.

The 'Hidden Promise' is a Lilium (thanks tombaak!), I bought the seed on ebay from the US from someone who saved theirs and their friends own seed. It should be Lilium philippinense, but even though it has the correctly coloured blue thing on the end of the style, as well as the correctly coloured pollen, it has no scent that I can smell, and the red and green striping on the outers doesn't seem right either. The closest I have come across is one sold by rareplants here, L. poilanei, the correct one as they put it and is specific to one small location I think in Vietnam, but it should also have a scent. I bought a bulb last autumn to satisfy my curiosity (it barely made a stem), I grew the seed the prvious year and they flowered last year with one flower. This year the healthiest one was 6 feet tall, a couple of others were shorter with still one flower, it was one of those which I spotted and snapped, and as usual it was as I was passing, camera with me at the ready.

I think I only took two pics, that's the beauty of this camera, although I still take many pics, often over 200 in a session, sometimes twice a day, then as you can imagine there's a lot of work sorting them. I now find though that I end up with several reasonable pics of which I choose the best, whereas with the compact I still took plenty but had fewer keepers.

This is the same flower opened, this one has yellow pollen where the tall one has brown, and as you can see I dabbed pollen on it which I kept from last year off L. gloriosides (that got zapped by this year's dreadful weather), no luck there though! Sorry about the long story!