The New Hardware

A few years ago, back when Grant and I were engaged, we spent a day with my extended family at Lagoon, an amusement park in Utah.  My aunt Gina brought her camera, a Canon Rebel XT, and let me borrow it.  I had a little too much fun.  It helped that my adorable cousins were there and willing to pose for me.

I had no idea what I was doing or how the camera worked (I still don't :)  But I felt cool with a big camera in my hands and I felt like that Canon took way better pictures than I could on my point & shoot.

But really, how can you have a bad picture with that goofy girl in it?

The next year, Grant & I graduated from BYU and were trying to decide whether to treat ourselves to a graduation present.  We did a bunch of research on dSLR cameras similar to the one my aunt Gina had.  Two of my sister-in-laws had dSLR cameras as well and walked us through some of the basics that we should know before buying.  However, then we moved to Texas and had to pay for a moving truck, a bunch of gas, a deposit for our apartment, washer & dryer... blah blah blah.  The camera dreams disappeared.

A few months ago, we decided that we wanted to start saving for a camera.  When the day comes that little Granties & Kelseys are running around the house (which will hopefully not still be this little apartment) I want to be able to not only document their little lives, but to take quality pictures.  We also want to have home videos... mostly so we can submit them to AFV... just kidding... probably... But anyway, that's a future venture.

And eventually, we came to purchase this:

It is a Canon Rebel XS.  The Rebel line is the lowest step of Canon's dSLR cameras.  SLR stands for "Single Lens Reflex" and d stands for "Digital."  The whitish rectangle you see in the middle of that picture is a mirror.  When you take a picture, that mirror moves out of the way to expose the sensor that captures the image.  I just learned that by googling it...

There are a few basic advantages of a dSLR over a point and shoot camera (P&S).  First, you can change the lens according to the type of picture you want to take.  Second, a dSLR allows you to control manual settings that are generally automatic on a  P&S.  There are way more settings than I know about yet.  The ones I have been working on learning (and are the most crucial in learning to use a dSLR) are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.  There are other advantages (and disadvantages) as well, but I really don't know much about them yet...  We're working on the basics here, people!

I'm going to try to document my camera adventures here on our blog.  It has been a fun adventure so far and I feel like I learn something new every time I take a picture.  Maybe next time little Halle is my model, I'll have a little more control of the images I capture.  But this one is fun anyway :)