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In the category of "nobody cares but I'm going to tell you all about it
anyway": I just bought a new camera.
For those of you not following this saga, my previous camera has been
annoying me for years. It has a number of problems:
* It's powered by 4x AA batteries. The batteries will run flat after
about 90 minutes, regardless of WHETHER THE CAMERA IS TURNED ON! >_<
Yes, you heard me right. If you put batteries in, wait a while, you will
find them stone-dead. That can't be right...
* It's a 3 megapixel camera, but each and every time you put the
batteries back in, you have to tell it the date isn't 2002, and you have
to tell it to *not* shoot everything at 1 megapixel. Because that's why
you bought a 3 megapixel camera, right?
* Unless you're standing in the Sahara desert at noon on midsummer's
day, the camera will whine and complain that there's insufficient light.
It will demand that you use the flash. If you do not use the flash, the
images will come out shaky as hell, and/or a dark orange / brown colour.
* Paradoxically, in direct sunlight, everything turns a weird shade of blue.
* The camera point-blank *refuses* to focus on very small objects. If
something is less than a foot away from the lens, the camera will just
focus on the stuff behind it instead.
Having said all that, it *does* shoot nicer pictures than my mum's 7
megapixel camera. Presumably because the lens on my camera is about 55mm
across, whereas the lens on hers is 3mm. :-P
So anyway, when I got home from Christmas, I discovered that my landlord
had refunded me THREE THOUSAND POUNDS that they accidentally overcharged
me since I moved it. (??!) So naturally, I did what any normal human
would have done: I bought a Nikon D3300 digital single lens reflex camera.
The guy in the shop tells me this is the best-selling DSLR camera they
have. (But then, he *would* say that, right?) All I know is that after
inspecting the Nikon website, I can't find *any* difference in
specifications between the D3300 and several other Nikon models 8x the
price. (The differences I did find were all obscure stuff that only a
professional photographer would give a damn about. Stuff like remote
management, flash synchronisation, automatic focus bracketing, etc.)
While I was there, I also bought the accessory bag - mostly because it
includes a spare battery. (This camera is powered by a custom Lithium
ion battery pack, so it's presumably irreplaceable once it inevitably
stops working.)
The camera "kit" I purchased actually consists of the camera body plus
one lens. (It's a Nikkor AF-S DX 18-55m f/3.5-5.6G ED II, in case you
care.) It includes a lens cover, carry strap, and one battery. But it
doesn't include any sort of carry case for the camera, hence why I
bought the accessory pack (which primarily consists of a carry bag).
it takes 2 hours to charge the battery. (Apparently Lithium ion
batteries should always be stored uncharged for maximum longevity.)
Still, while I'm waiting for that, I got to do the more terrifying part
of the unpacking process: INSTALLING THE LENS.
and stare into the gaping abyss that leads to the fragile heart of the
device. At any moment, a single speck of dust or a stray human hair
could fall into the machine, permanently destroying a very expensive
piece of equipment. This is a harrowing time indeed!
It took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to slot the lens into the
body. If only I'd read the instructions, I would have known that both
the body and the lens helpfully have a mark that you're supposed to line
up, and then it's easy. *sigh*
Having fitted the lens, everything is blurry as hell. But wait. It turns
out, you have to give the zoom ring a twist, and the lens telescopes
apart and becomes functional. Apparently it collapses to reduce storage
space, but is only usable when unpacked. Good to know! (And kinda trippy
to watch!)
The battery is still charging, but I was able to play with the lens a
little. Since this is an SLR, you don't need power to look through the
viewfinder and see the image that will be captured. The lens has a zoom
ring, which gives an impressive degree of zoom in/out. It also has a
tiny ring for manually focusing, which is kind of flimsy and difficult
to use. The viewfinder is so tiny it's very hard to know if you're in
focus or not.
Eventually the battery finished charging, and I was able to load the
battery and SD card into my camera and actually SHOOT SOME STUFF,
PEOPLE! :-D
I like this camera. I like this camera *a lot*! Let me tell you why I
like it.
The first thing I did was to wander round my flat shooting stuff. At
this point, it's dark outside, so everything is under artificial light.
Running in full-auto mode, the camera produced really sharp, crisp
images that accurately reflect the actual brightness and *colour* that I
actually saw with my eyeballs.
Even when shooting in *silly* light levels, the camera still produces
good shots. At one point, I went into my bedroom and turned all the
lights off. *I* couldn't see a damned thing, but somehow the camera
managed to produce a moderately well exposed image of the dim glow from
the various LEDs dotted around the place. I mean, sure, it was grainy as
hell, but I'm shooting photographs IN THE FRIGGING DARK! By rights I
should have got nothing but a black screen. The camera managed far more
than that.
I've since discovered that there's a night-vision mode. It makes
everything black and white and stupidly grainy, but if you set a long
exposure, you can take really quite good pictures in *absurd* lighting
conditions.
I took my camera and shot the view from my window. It was after sundown,
and there was a street light in shot. And yet, still the camera delivers
a sharp, well-exposed image, while still not over-exposing the naked
light in the shot. I took a shot of the inside of my fridge. Even with
this hopeless lighting setup, the camera somehow delivered a clear,
lifelike rendition of the scene.
The *other* thing, of course, is that my old camera has almost no
adjustable settings. You can set the white balance between a few
hard-coded presets, and you can turn the exposure up or down slightly,
and you have some control over what the autofocus targets. And that's
about it. But the new camera is an SLR. You can do *crazy* things like
select a 30-second exposure time if you want. (I'm still waiting to try
out the whole "blurry time-lapse waves" shot... It's just too ****ing
cold outdoors right now!)
The flash does a surprisingly good job of illuminating even quite large
spaces. And there's an "autofocus lamp" that briefly lights stuff up
while the camera tries to focus (even if you don't use the actual flash
for the shot itself). It's 9-point autofocus too, so I'm seeing far
fewer incidences of the camera focusing on something completely
unrelated to what I want to shoot.
I was also able to take pictures of some really tiny objects around the
house. I've got a picture of my toaster where you can count the crumbs
on the lid. And another of a spider in my bathroom where you can could
the... uh... *damn*, I really need to clean my bathroom! :-S
I bought the camera specifically because I knew we're going to see my
uncle John the next day. And I took *lots* of pictures in the car on the
way. It snowed, so I was able to shoot lots of snowscapes.
With the camera in sport mode, I was able to make shots from a vehicle
thundering along at 70 MPH look like we were perfectly stationary. And
this on a dull, overcast winter's day. While I'm bouncing around inside
a moving car! (The streaky wiper blades on my dad's car didn't help,
however.) My God, I can take pictures with sky in them, and it looks
sensible!
The zoom ring proved it's worth time and time again; somehow moving a
physical ring with your hands just seems so much easier than pressing a
button on a computer.
I also got good use out of the "continuous shoot" mode. I kept finding
that I'd line up a nice landscape shot, and just as I press the button,
a tree would go past, completely obscuring my view. But in continuous
mode, you can shoot up to 5 frames per second, for up to 30 seconds
continuously. So just hold the button down and take (say) 6 shots. One
of them will be devoid of obstructions. (Hopefully!)
When I actually got to the destination, I was able to take several shots
in really quite poor lighting conditions, and again end up with really
quite impressive images. I think the cake is when I stood *indoors*
photographing stuff *outside*, at night, with bright lighting *behind*
it... and the camera correctly exposed the stuff I was actually trying
to shoot. Makes it look drastically brighter than it actually appeared
to my eyeballs. Looks like it's correctly lit, even though it wasn't.
Just... wow.
This weekend, I've been doing some miniature shots. First I did some
extreme close-ups of a glass paperweight I have. I made a few tiny
bubbles look like a vast galaxy. (But even this lens, it seems, as
limits to how close-up it can actually focus.) And today I did some arty
slanted close-ups of a box of assorted chocolates, with lots of "bokeh".
It looks damn sweet! On closer inspection, a little bit grainy, however.
Indeed, whereas the trouble with my last camera was that everything
comes out dark orange, the only problem I've found so far with this
camera is that some shots are a little bit grainy. Apparently that's
what happens in low light. You still get a decent-looking shot, but if
you look too closely, you find it's grainy. I guess the problem is
figuring out how to flood the scene with sufficient light! (Not easy at
this time of year when there's not much daylight...)
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