Blimey!

Well, better late than never. Here I am dipping a tentative toe into this blogging lark. Let’s see how it goes.

The plan is to share my experiences as I rediscover photography. I used to do a lot of it when I was younger, but as the digital age leapt upon us, my old film SLRs were getting a bit, well, old hat. I've still got them, a pair of Olympus OM10s if anyone’s interested…

Back to the digital stuff. For years I owned (still own, actually, though Best Beloved uses it now) a Minolta Dimage 7, which was an excellent first step for a budding digital photographer. However, while excellent for most image needs with the 10x optical zoom, it’s quite another prospect for some kinds of specialist stuff I wanted to take. We’ll come to that — patience, please. You need the backstory before we get into all that stuff.

So, for a few years, the Minnie did me fine, aided by some Cokin enlargement filters and a bit of ingenuity. All the time I was keeping a weather eye on the SLR market, to see what was occurring and whether any of the cameras would ever be affordable! Then Canon came up with a relatively affordable digital SLR, the EOS 300D. 

(For overseas viewers, I will be referring to the European/UK naming conventions. I apologise if Canon have made things complicated by naming my camera something else where you live!) 

I was sold. I spent the next couple of years saving, dreaming and scheming. Eventually, I decided the time (and price) was right to move into the DSLR world. Although not at this stage with the magic 24x35 full frame sensor, but having a 1.6x enlargement factor on the APS-C sensor has certain advantages.

So, late in 2006, I finally got my EOS 400D. Since then, I’ve added lenses, remote cables, filters, extra batteries, bigger memory cards, new tripods… hell, this photography game can be expensive if you get too carried away! I've found blogs and books to fill in many gaps, and I’ve tried to get into the habit of pointing the camera at anything and everything. Digital photography doesn’t need the film processed before you can see the results! 

And that is more or less where we are now. Nearly two years on, and I've still got the 400D. Canon recently announced a new version of a full-frame sensor camera, the 5D Mk II, and I hope that I will be able to afford one at some point down the line. In the meantime, I carry on taking photos with the 400D. 

Oh yeah, you want to know what specialist imagery I do. It’s nothing amazing. Best Beloved and I are fairly active railway modellers, and I like to take photos of our models. Oh, and other modellers’ work, naturally. The aim is for realism, to photograph the model in such a way that you’d not immediately twig it’s a photo of something you could hold in your hand. I will add some images in due course. Just want to find my feet with this blogging thingummybob first.