Maybe it was the crisp, cool air in the house (thank goodness for A/C) this afternoon that really got me thinking of Christmas, maybe it was the Christmas music playing on the stereo (thanks Sabrina), but I thought I'd impart all of the wisdom I have. Should take about the rest of this blog post to do it.
So I'm opinionated. Very opinionated. It's likely the reason why Sabrina and I get along so well. And as such, I thought I'd weigh in on 2 items that are likely on the shopping lists for several of the readers of our blog. Netbooks and cameras.
I've ranted about cameras a number of times, but people always ask, so here's the latest (and hopefully short) rant. Most people just want nice pictures and don't necessarily want nice cameras (too expensive). So how do you get nice pictures without a nice camera? Learn to use the one you have obviously!
Well wait you say, you're actually willing to spend a little bit of money to get a new camera, but don't have the money to buy into an SLR system? You have two choices, get a little one that you're more likely to carry with you or a larger one with more controls. You can actually do quite a bit with a your standard $150-$200 camera. So while spending more money on a nicer camera can get you some nice extras, don't feel that if you're limited this christmas on your budget that you can't get a camera that you can use to take good pictures of your kids. Learn to use it. Buy a camera with manual mode that you can set the aperture and shutter speed with. And learn what those mean and why they're important. Learn that bumping ISO often times gives you nicer (but grainier) pictures than using that built in flash. Anyway, take away is that even less expensive cameras take nice pictures, so if yours is old, you don't have to drop $600+ to get a camera something worthwhile.
Netbooks
The current craze striking the computing world right now are things called netbooks. They're low powered computers that all seem to run the same Atom processor with 160 gb hard drives and 1 gb of ram. We've owned one for over a year now and I have to say that I've loved having mine. We bought an Acer Aspire One back when they were one of 3 options on the market. It's run well and gets lots of use. It's a little underpowered for watching Hulu fullscreen, though some of the newer netbooks have better grapics/cpus that might handle it better. If you're looking to get one as a second computer, I definitely recommend it. It's great being able to look up things wherever. Sabrina brings it into the kitchen a lot for recipes. She can have it upstairs when she's rocking Chase to sleep. It's light and super portable. Plus the 5+ hours of battery life on it are the best part. You can use it for a couple of days (light use) before you need to plug it back in.
Anyway, this post didn't turn out to be quite as in-depth as I had envisioned it, but then again, people might still be reading at this point, so it's a trade off. But in case you're wondering what to get me for Christmas, feel free to get me one of these. It's exactly why you need to be careful if you start getting into photography.
3 comments:
If you want to make an inexpensive camera behave like an expensive one, you might consider getting a Canon and going with CHDK. This is obviously not for the technically faint of heart.
I think I have your name for Christmas cousin. And you're in luck. I just won the lottery!
We just got an xsi for $50. The girl selling it thought it was broken. We tried to convince her that she should trade it in for a 50D from cannon, but she'd already just bought a 7D (or something) and just wanted to get rid of it. So, we bought it thinking we'd trade it in for a 50D. Turns out just auto focus on the lens broke when she dropped it. The camera is fine and doesn't even have a scratch. We wondered if she knew the lens came off.
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