At this point, I’m leaning towards Canon and their EOS Rebel XSi. I have several friends who are acquainted with the Canon models, and they may have lenses I can poach.
The D90 is the camera I would be interested in purchasing from Nikon. It looks to be a more expensive alternative to the XSi, but with the HD video recording capability, it’s really a different class of camera.
So, at this point, I’m not sure which one to purchase. In addition to choosing the camera body, I have to figure out which lens will be best for my current shooting style. That may or may not be an easy task for me, as I have been spoiled by Sony H1, the advanced point-and-shoot camera that I have now, which has 12x optical zoom that allows me to shoot a variety of subjects from a variety of distances.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me? You can see what I’ve shot in the past at Flickr. Maybe that will help any real photographers out there help me decide on my first lens.
Tonight, Grant and I made scallops served atop fettuccine with a garlic and white wine cream sauce. We modified this recipe from Allrecipes.com to make a sauce more appropriate to be served with pasta. We added more cream and white wine, subtracted some butter and added some Parmesan cheese. We’re not really sure how much more cream, wine or cheese we added, but it’s pretty safe to say that we only added a stick and a half two sticks of butter to the sauce.
The scallops were prepared almost as directed in the above recipe, except that we doubled the cooking time for each side because of the size of the scallops.
Overall, the dish was quite tasty. However, I wonder if this will be yet another dish that I would rather just go to a restaurant and order rather than make it myself.
Last night I uploaded all of my photos, good and bad, of the total lunar eclipse, the last for North America until 2010. I literally dug out the telescope and Grant and Al came over after Al’s haircut and getting dinner to view the eclipse with me. The telescope was a little difficult to use at first, as the cold weather made it harder to focus. Grant figured it out and found the moon, and he kept track of its movements in the night sky.
I know it’s only September, but I am now declaring that I will be doing a Project 365 photo journal for 2008. I’ve been wanting to take more pictures, hoping to improve my skills in time for our trip to Alaska next summer. This should help.
I’ve joined the Project 365 Flickr group. Perhaps I will find inspiration as I browse through members’ photos. For the rest of the year, I’m going to try to take and post a photo each week. With luck, I’ll be able to keep up with it and I will be ready for January 1, 2008, when I start the daily adventure.
Like Herschell, I also have a photo appearing in Schmap. A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail via Flickr from the people at Schmap saying that they were considering one of my photos for use in their travel guide for Chicago, specifically for Water Tower Place. I completed the submission form, and today I found out that my photo was chosen (I actually received the e-mail just a couple days after submitting my photo, but I don’t usually check my Flickr mail).
One of the funny things is my caption for the photo, which reads, "Water Tower Place looks kind of like Woodfield, but without any of the useful stores." My photo appears in the Chicago Stores & Arcades section, and it’s supposed to help promote Water Tower Place. I’m not changing my caption, mostly because of the irony of the situation. I just wish I would have adjusted the color of the photo to remove the yellow hue from the sodium lights. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
Now that I’ve finally figured out how to get onto the wireless network in our hotel (thanks, Lynn, Jamie and Chris), I can post a little update about our trip. Yesterday, during our six hour drive up to Northfield, Minnesota, we had quite a few great vistas consisting of the Wisconsin and Minnesota countryside (is that even the right term?). Unfortunately, I wasn’t comfortable stopping to take photos of them, but we might be able to do that on the way back to Illinois.
What we were able to do is to stop by LaCrosse before crossing into Minnesota. Luckily, Riverfest is being held this weekend, and we stopped by that and took in the view of the Mississippi River. I am in the process of uploading photos to Flickr from yesterday. So, check them out if you’re in my friends and/or family list.
I’ll try to write more tomorrow, but for now I have to get ready for the wedding.
I saw a demo of Microsoft Photosynth last year when my former boss came across it while looking for something else. Hell, for all I know we both came across it at the same time, but I think he sent me a link to it. I had set my knowledge of this software marvel aside in my brain, untill Scott posted a video of the TED demo of Photosynth and Seadragon, its parent technology. You can tell that Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the presenter, is really passionate about the technology and his work.
The Tech Preview of Photosynth is quite impressive, and you should check it out. I just spent the last ten or fifteen minutes going through Piazza San Marco to see if any of my photos were included. Unfortunately, I don’t think I tagged my photos of Venice any more precisely than "Venice." Oh well.
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