San Francisco – Pt.1 : Night Shooting

 Deserves a quiet night…

There are few things more spectacular than the golden gate bridge at night and I was extremely keen to use the excuse of being out in SF to have a first stab at night photography.  In hindsight, it might have been sensible to have a go somewhere a little more boring first, get used to the concept. Nah, jump right in the deep end and see what happens. I do that a lot.

Rain, Rain, Go away

In-Door shooting:

Spring has sprung in the UK, which means my new hobby has been somewhat put on hold. It has been decided, I am not yet keen enough to brave all this crappy weather. The good news (for me) at least is, tomorrow I will be on a plane heading to mean old 'frisco,  spending as much time as possible taking lots and lots of pics that stink!

The weekend was rather limited to studies of a more theoretical nature.  That is not to say that nothing was achieved. I actually used the time trying to get to grips with Adobe Lightroom.

Friday night is all about silliness and entertainment, last weekend was no exception. After much drinking and merriment we were back at my flat with friends whose patience are much appreciated. In-between shots of Polish vodka, they allowed me to snap away at them. The results were largely terrible, the drunker we got, the more I played with settings on the camera. Every button was played with, from fully auto (flash on) to fully manual. The thumb across lens was a moment one hopes to forget quickly.

First weekend

Auto off

So, what did I learn this weekend? Quite a lot actually, I am still processing a lot of it, but I did shoot my first pics that stink, with the camera in Manual mode; that was rather pleasing. Kind of like the first time you take the stabilisers off your bike and your dad shoves you down the road towards the canal.

Key learning's from the weekend coming up then:

BANG! You're (my wallet) is dead.

It's arrived!

Ordered on Monday night, arrived on Wednesday, excellent! 

The box sat next to my desk for all of 1/2 hour before curiosity got the better of me. After being egged on by Mike M I cracked open the box and had a looksy. I took a couple of photos with my iPhone, for the sake of history, of course.

At this point I put the battery into its neat little charger and went about my day, the book said 3(ish) hours to charge and who am I to argue.

Target Acquired!

Well, I've only gone and done it! 

I have deliberated, cogitated and digested so much information over the last week, that I should have a permanent headache. That isn't the case and the sad truth is I am beyond excited.

After blasting questions all over Facebook & twitter, spent my evenings reading tonnes of information on the web and bored the hell out of my photo-crazy friends; the final decision on what camera I will buy has been made.

A few minutes ago I pressed the "buy now" button on one of these babies:  

It is the Sony SLT-A65 which will hopefully be winging its way through the post to me over the course of the next few days. 

For more information check out the linked page on Sony's offical website.

Weapon of choice

In my last post I talked about my approach to this hobby and shared the list created from the advice given by my pals on Facebook. Today I am going to focus on step 1, "buy a camera".

Four days have passed since that conversation and I can honestly say that this has been confusing as hell. It doesn't seem to matter how many reviews or guides I read, it all seems to come down to one thing. This one is rubbish, get a more expensive one; then once you have it, take off the lens, throw that away and buy several new ones. Oh, and they are also rubbish, unless you get the bloody expensive ones.

This led me to my first real decision. I need to draw a line in the sand and steadfastly refuse to spend more than the amount I have promised myself. I have decided that my absolute limit for the price of a new camera is 600 quid. I am after all a complete beginner and suspect that anything better than that would be somewhat wasted on me, for now at least.