Ain't no point and shoot

After much deliberation, making decisions and changing my mind again, for at least 9 months I have finally taken the plunge and ordered myself a Nikon D3100. I am super excited for it to arrive and can't wait to start playing around with it.

As a child I would spend a fair amount of time with my Dad at his studio, as for short time he was a self employed photographer. So my earliest camera experiences were with his Nikon F801, which I still have. In my teens I was given a simple pracktica film camera but I was always frustrated by its low zoom capabilities and its inability to take consistently reasonable pictures. Fair enough it was cheap camera, one can't expect miracles. Then I got a Kodak Easyshare ZD710 which is has my faithful companion for several years. The zoom was great and over the years I got some really nice pictures out of it, and it was my first solo journey into digital. The view finder was easier for steady shots and a life saver in bright sunshine as screens can be near impossible to see. But, alas, as time went on I wanted more from a camera. I wanted a camera that wouldn't come undone with slightest bit of darkness, one that would capture the moment there and then and not take 10 seconds to even decide if it can take the picture. It was time to retire the old Kodak and head for pastures green.

But then I hit a wall.....the wall of endless choice between camera's, and the techno-babble that went along with. Not mentioned the sometimes scary price tags.

Don't get me wrong, I know a few things. I know what mega pixels are, about auto focus and digital and optical zoom. But a lot of the time, its stuff that doesn't need to be complicated and long winded. It's almost like the manufacturers want to confuse you so much you'll accidentally buy it in the process of trying to get your head around the lingo.

On top of that with so much choice available I was struggling to decide exactly what was best for me and what my budget should be. I'm an animal lover, so naturally I enjoy taking pictures of animals and nature. Each moment can be so fleeting that I needed a camera with speed, something that won't take all day trying to process what it is seeing. I also attend certain events where flash is prohibited so I needed something that could take a reasonably picture in low light, not helped by the fact I don't have the steadiest hands. An absolute requirement was good zoom, critters tend not to be a fan of up close and personal.

So I had options......

 

• Should I go for a smaller camera, which will be cheaper and travel better. I'd narrowed that down to a Sony dsch55, which had a good zoom and the panoramic option looks amazing, but would it give me speed I wanted and good enough quality in low lighting.
•  Or should I go full hog and get a DSLR. I really had my heart set on the Nikon D3100 as all the reviews and magazines where saying that it was the best introductory SLR out there. It had everything I needed. Just a little expensive (although cheap by SLR standards) and I was worried about the size and it's practicality when it came to traveling. 
•  And then there's the middle of the road option. Compact System Cameras. The price for these swung either way but they still weren't cheap. I really like the Sony NEX5 and found it to be quite sexy piece of kit. There's the options of changing lenses, the speed of SLRs but more the size of a compact digital. Sounds perfect....so why didn't I get that one?

Thanks to my upbringing I've always had a soft spot for Nikons. I think deep down that was the camera I always wanted. The problem was I had so many other people telling me what I should and shouldn't get. You want something smaller, something cheaper would be better, you shouldn't get an SLR unless you know how to use them (then how will I learn). In the end it took one person to convince me to go with heart and the only person I really wanted to listen to about this stuff. My dad. If I wanted the speed it had to be the NEX or the Nikon. All he said was there aren't as many accessories with the Sony as there will be for the Nikon. That is all it took to tip the scales.

This took 9 months to a year for me to figure and take the plunge.

So here I am, patiently (not) waiting for my new camera to arrive (plus funky new camera bag) and wondering why it took so long. From that I can tell you 2 things I learned about myself:

1. I am really really really indecisive
2. I need to learn to start going with either my gut or my heart (can't work out which one it was in this occasion. Pretty sure it was heart).

I will keep you posted on my learning curve, and maybe post some of the resulting pics.

Adios