My new love...

My birthday has come and gone and with it a whirlwind of gifts and a trip to Music City. I'll post more about our Nashville escapades later, but I wanted to share with you the awesome-ist gift--I'm sure that's a word--my husband purchased for me.

I think I had mentioned on a prior post my wishes for a nice SLR camera. Well, I had spoken to my husband about it once--ONCE!--a month or two prior to my birthday. I was quietly doing research on my own trying to learn a little bit about the features of that sort of camera, comparing brands I was familiar with like Nikon and Canon, looking into what camera would be good for a beginner, etc. Lo and behold, the last gift I opened on my birthday, the ONE gift that my husband got me, was this baby:



Now I have to admit, I was onto him on this one. I had questioned him several times about birthday shopping for me and he was so nonchalant about it. As in, "Oh, birthday shopping for you was so EASY this year, I've already completely finished." So the combination of his nonchalance and my recalling the camera discussion we had made it all come together for me. I had a sneaking suspicion that he had gotten me one BIG gift and I gave him flak about it a couple of times prior. Must be womens intuition or something.

He bought this Pentax at a local camera store, Creve Coeur Camera, and according to him he spent an hour and a half there days before--yes, my husband is a procrastinator big time--my birthday. The salesman touted this camera as wonderful for a beginner, despite being not a brand a lot of people have heard of. And what really put it over the top was it's value--it came in a combo package with 2 lenses, a 18-55 mm and a 50-200 mm. He also purchased the lens filters and had the batteries in it and all ready to go when I opened it. Oh the joy!

I was able to use it several times in Nashville--I'll be sure to point out which pictures were taken with it in my Nashville post--and although I'm only using the "auto" function right now, I'm loving it already!

One benefit of purchasing the camera from Creve Coeur Camera is that they offer a wide variety of classes--some for beginners, some that are camera specific, others for those that are more advanced. With the camera purchase, my husband received a coupon so I could take their Digital Basics class for free! I'm signed up for the Monday, September 28th evening session, so I'll fill you all in as to how it goes after that. Here the description about it from their website:

Digital Basics
Do you have a digital camera and want to know more about what it can do? If you would like to use your camera to its potential, this free one-hour seminar can help you. We'll talk about the advantages of digital photography, some common terms, storage media, printing and about some simple programs to play with and manipulate your images.

They also have camera specific classes, so I've already signed up for one for my Pentax K2000 in October. This one should show me all the in's and out's for my camera and educate me on all the settings and when to use them. Now THIS sounds interesting:

Pentax K200D/2000
This user-friendly DSLR camera for the beginning digital photographer captures high quality images with either simplified operation or use of manual options. This class will show you the best options in different situations, even low-light conditions. Bring your camera, batteries, manual and questions.

Then once I get all that figured out and am comfortable with it, I can delve deeper into the manual functions of the camera and how to utilize those. One thing at a time, though. Can you tell I'm excited? [insert giddy laughter here] Hopefully you all won't get tired of my new photography obsession. Wahoo!