A Year of Photos

It has been a little over a year since I first purchased a Nikon DSLR. The first model I bought was a D40, but soon, I needed something a little more. When autofocus motors first were introduced in Nikon, they were placed in the body that would mate with the slotted screw in the lens. A few years later, Nikon would begin creating lenses with autofocus motors. The D40 excluded the in-camera motor so autofocus would require lenses with the motor inside. After the first of the year, I purchased a 50mm f/1.8 lens, which was designed for Nikon bodies with the AF motor.

It became frustrating to autofocus with the shallow depth of field possible with the fast 50mm lens, so I decided to look around for perhaps a used D80 and found several dealer samples for $550 dollars on several websites. And then I wondered how much a D200 would run and eventually I found that BestBuy.com were selling the bodies for $799. I decided to go ahead and purchase the D200 and as soon as it landed in my hands, they marked the price down to $650. Since it was within the thirty days, they credited my card and a week later, it drops to $600 and another $50 was credited to me. So I really got a new D200 for $50 more than a used dealer sample D80, although I would have been satisfied either way. However, I do love the ability to change settings without having to go into the menu system.

I really love digital and the ability to learn quickly. So far, I've captured over 20,000 images, but only posted a few hundred on my flickr account. Some images I thought were fantastic out in the field were less inspiring when viewed larger and some which had been nice images really stood out when looking through a day of shooting. I wish I could dedicate more time to photography, but work and college come first.

However, the time that I have spent has really reenforced the conceptual ideas of photography into practical applications. An example of this is the basic exposure triangle. While seemingly easy to understand, there are many who have spent thousands of dollars for the best equipment who lack such knowledge and fail to understand why their photos on their D300s come out blurred. Like I said, when I first got into it, I shot with the entry level D40 and quickly learned that the camera fought against me by automatically setting the ISO speed. After setting up the camera, I spent five months shooting 95% of the time in manual mode pressing the exposure compensation button, which was used in manual mode, to change aperture.

But it really began a love of capturing images that I could share.