I have a confession. I love the man in brown. He's full of surprises - sometimes it's a pair of sassy shoes, sometimes a few yards of fabric, sometimes an awesome Etsy find. He outdid himself with the little brown box he brought me two weeks ago. If you follow me on Instagram, you already know what was inside:
My old point-and-shoot camera had been dying a slow death and I wanted to upgrade to a better camera but keep it within a budget of around $500. After reading a ton of camera reviews on entry-level DSLRs, I ended up going with the Canon EOS Rebel T3i 18MP. With the 18-55mm lens, it was $559 through Amazon. (There are newer versions, the T4i and T5i, of this same camera but after balancing the pros of the upgraded features in the new cameras and the cons of the additional $200+ price tag, I went with the T3i).
So one of my fears in buying a DSLR camera is that it would take days of reading the instruction manual before figuring out how to take a single decent picture. I was loving it to find that my Canon has a fully automatic mode which allows it to be used just like a point-and-shoot. About five minutes after my camera battery was first charged, I shot this pic of my little buddy:
and this one of the fall leaves:
But I didn't buy a DSLR just to use it like a point-and-shoot, right? But...I would need to do a lot more reading and practicing before figuring out how to take a decent picture in manual mode. What to do? Use my camera's "Creative Auto" mode - it's the next step up from the fully automatic mode - perfect for the newbie like me who is getting away from point-and-shoot but can't yet handle full manual.
It allows you to change the "ambience" (basically, the color) from standard to settings such as cool, brighter, vivid, etc. It also allows you to adjust the background to more sharp or blurred, adjust the flash from auto to off or on, and adjust the drive mode for single shooting or continuous shooting.
While in the Creative Auto mode, you can also easily move the auto focus point (which appears as the green box in the pic) from the center of the shot to the left or right or up or down. For example, I moved the focus point down from the center of the frame to focus on the closest leaf in this pic:
but I also could have moved it near to the top of the frame to focus on the farther away branches instead.
With my new camera, there's a huge difference in the quality of pictures that I can take without a flash in low light conditions. When I was taking pics of my guest room that was in the middle of being remodeled, as much as I tried this was the best that I could do with my old camera (pretty grainy, right?!):
but I used my new camera to take the pics for my guest room reveal and you can see how much better the image quality is (and hopefully how much better the room design is also :-):
The only disappointment that I've had with my new camera is that the 18-55mm lens that I bought with it does not reach far enough for some of the pics that I've wanted to take. I'm already thinking that I'll need to buy another lens to use for things such as the kids' sports when they are farther away.
So if you've been thinking of making the change from a point-and-shoot to a DSLR camera, go for it! It has been so much less intimidating than I expected. Wish I'd made the change years ago! Tackling my camera's manual mode is officially on my 2014 resolution list (only 7 more weeks until the new year - can you believe it?!).
