The New Camera

First, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  I actually write these blogs in the evening of the day that stuff happens.  I save a draft of it, and then when I wake up at o'dark thirty I proof read it, and then publish it.  Then when Pam gets up she reads it and points out all my typos and I edit  it and repost it.

Yesterday (today actually, but when I hit the "publish" button tomorrow, it will be today.  See the pressure I'm working under here?) Pam convinced me to buy a new camera.  I enjoy taking photos, and someone left my old camera on the Boston Whaler overnight and it rained.  It wasn't waterproof, apparently.

We drove to a mall in Savannah and went to Wolf Cameras.  I was approached by a young (I'd guess about 9), thin, blond girl, shy and demure.  Oh great, I think to  myself, a kid who works here part time and won't know jack about cameras.  Boy, was I wrong. 

Her name was Savannah ("I know, and I'm not even from here!").  She asked me what I was looking for in a camera.  I told her my old one was a high end point and shoot and I was thinking about a low end digital single lens reflex (DSLR).  I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it since 100% of my photos stay on my laptop or wind up downsized for this blog.  I'd like a couple of lenses for it, with a decent telephoto, and image stabilization would be nice since I take most of my photos from the boat.

Savannah handed me a Nikon D3100, a 14 megapixel camera, with a Nikkos 18-55mm lens and a 56-300mm.  She explained the important features of the camera quite expertly.  Each lens has its own motor and stabilization.  I liked it and bought it, along with an extra battery and a case.

Back at the boat, I actually read the directions before putting it all together.  It might be a reflection of my age, but this camera has way too many functions.  There are myriad buttons and knobs to push that set the camera to do all kinds of things automatically, and if that's not good enough, you can do them manually.  My last SLR was a film camera and it had a built in light meter and I thought that was pretty exotic.  I'd set the aperature and shutter speed and focus and shoot.  This thing requires ten minutes of surfing through menus to do the same thing.  Such is progress and modern technology, I guess.

Just to show you how intimidating this camera is, these are the instructions that came with the battery charger.

Most of the instructions are cover your butt legalise and all about the danger of fire and putting your eye out and stuff.  If I wrote the instructions, it would read:

1. Put battery in charger.

2. Plug in.

3. Wait.

It would fit on a post card.  And have a font large enough to read without a magnifying glass.

Here is our cruisers' dinner last night, photographed with the new camera.  One thing about being retired, cruising, and staying in one place too long is that you sleep late.  When you sleep late, you eat breakfast late, and lunch late, and dinner is just too much too late.  This works for us sometimes.

The last thing I'm going to mention, and I know this is going to come as a shocker to you all, is that we're converting the week we paid for here to a monthly rate.  We probably won't go any farther south than Isle of Hope, Georgia.  Why, you ask? 

Well, first of all, we really like it here.  The marina staff are very nice and accommodating and dog friendly.  There is a fenced in place for the dogs to run off leash.  It's close to downtown Savannah and all the sights there.  The weather here is warm now with Spring busting out all over.  And it's close to the vet.  The vet?

Last night, Pam looked at Chevy's paw that was sliced open by an oyster shell and thinks it may be infected.

So it's off to the vet for Chevy today.  Poor dog.  He's such a good boy.  Ruby would never tolerate having her paw stuck in disinfectant like that.  That's the difference between getting a dog as a puppy and spoiling her rotten, and getting a rescue dog that was set to be euthanized because his owner didn't want him and who is grateful to have a forever home.

That's a story for another day.