Best Husband in the World

I am so lucky sometimes.

D mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that he saw an ad on tv for a digital SLR camera and that perhaps I would be interested in it. I didn't say too much about it at the time for fear of scaring him off. I mean I'm pretty much a nut when it comes to all things cameras and being a dedicated film user I haven't been interested in digital as I would never believe that I could afford to buy the digital camera of my dreams.

So when D brought this up again I sussed out some things about digital using the wonderful review sites on the internet. Such a fantastic research tool, don't you think? I rediscovered a review site called dpreview which I had found around a year or two ago. Back then I had salivated over this exhaustive site and the comparisons for such a long time that I had pretty much committed them to memory, then I promptly forgot about it after broaching the subject with D receiving a negative response.

I was thrilled to find the site again and see that they had current reviews on the camera's that I was wanting, so I spent the best part of the last two weeks checking it all out and coming to a conclusion. Such a difficult matter and I was swayed to the other party on more than one occasion but in the end Canon won out. I took my research back to D with a comprehensive list of prices from local and overseas retailers to show that I had done my homework and on Saturday D said that we were going shopping.

I just couldn't believe it. So soon! We decided that we'd have a look locally and went to the mall in Hornsby and had a bit of a looksie at various retailers and went back to the first one we saw. They won out on several levels. The most important one being service. The other three stores that we walked into were just not up to scratch on their knowledge and customer service levels. One of those reps even said "so you're after the lens and case". To which I replied, "no, the lens and body!" Eeedjiot! They were cheaper but I can't stand that sort of lack of product knowledge and abuse of terms.

So feeling very light headed we waited back in the first store and went through the exciting/nerve racking process of purchasing my first digital slr. I still thought I was dreaming and had to constantly have D reassure me that this was all ok. He even said I could get the CPL, circular polarising filter, which are quite pricey compared to other filters. I also took the opportunity to upgrade the lens to a 17-85mm so that I had a bit more quality and range to play with than the standard 18-55mm. It took quite a long time to get it all together and paid for and during that time I was feeling rather lightheaded and faint. D was feeling the same way too but I think it was more to do with the amount of cash he was handing over at the time.

So now I am the proud owner of a Canon EOS 30D and love it to bits, but of course I love my husband even more, if only marginally.

The only downer about digital was the fact that I had to wait at least 8 hours for the battery to charge. D was thoughtful enough to suggest that we go for a drive to the beach the next day so that I was able to snap away to my hearts content and he could go fishing. FUN!!! I was so excited that I had a great subject to test out the 5fps feature with the waves crashing into the rocks and swelling up amongst the boulders. I also went on a bit of an excursion around the point and discovered a pipe inserted into the rock shelf that had the water welling up inside with the waves and every so often creating a blow hole. I managed to rack up around 70+ images in a few hours so D was thrilled to bits that it wasn't film and it also verified that it was indeed a top/wise purchase.

I'll share some pics hopefully tomorrow once I figure out how to install the software and download them.

Lucky me huh!! And lucky you too, you get topics more relative to time, instead of me waiting for the film to be processed in order to write about it! Note the previous post being a spectacular example of this!

stay tuned!