Read the Manual!

I am telling you, some days I feel pretty dumb! Today is one of those days.

A while back I was telling you all about my photography "skills". I am working on getting better, but I am not going to run out and spend a bunch of money on classes and stuff because I'm too cheap! I am also not going to buy a new Nikon (or whatever brand) "will do everything for you, just point and shoot" style thousands of dollars camera. 99% of the pictures I take are just snapshots of our daily life and they really don't have to be works of art. There is that 1% of the time though when I really wish I knew what I was doing.

M bought me my first digital camera six or seven years ago. I was so excited to finally be rid of my film camera (which was just a basic, basic camera - a $25 jobbie) and be able to see my pictures before I printed them! It was a Kodak EasyShare C533. It was a simple camera - 5.0 MP and 3x optical zoom - but it took beautiful pictures and for a few years I was more than happy with it.

In June of 2008, I went out west for a visit and saw the mountains for the first time. My little Kodak still took beautiful pictures of the landscape, but I was so disappointed when trying to take pictures of the wildlife. I admit, I got camera envy! My sister had this Sony camera with 12x zoom and was able to get so many amazing shots. I called home to M to see if he was okay with me buying a new camera. I was a little shocked when he told me to go ahead! Off to the mall I went and bought myself a Sony Cybershot with 8.1 MP and 10x optical zoom! It wasn't as fancy as my sister's camera, but I was pretty pleased!

I have several friends who are photographers. Real photographers - they get paid to do this stuff! I love them dearly and they are always trying to give me photography advice. They use weird terms like F stop and shutter speed and scatter shot. My response to them has always been, "I don't think my camera does that." I have only ever used the preset options on the little dial.

Today I found the box for my camera and inside was the manual. I don't think I have ever looked inside of it. There are entire menus for manual settings and I even found my camera DOES have a scatter shot option! I even discovered that there are many additional lenses I can get! It's like a whole new world! I can't wait to get back to the girls and see what they can show me now!