So, I am currently broke BUT I have a new D7000 and it is totally worth the penny-pinching I'm going to have to do for awhile =)
I realize that it has been a long long time since I've posted but I thought that it'd be better to wait to post good news along with the bad and the mundane.
The last month has been pretty hectic. Teaching can be both extremely rewarding and mind-numbingly painful all at the same time. Whoever thinks that teaching is an easy job and that they can just figure it out through sheer guesswork should go and teach a class of only 9 right before winter break.... Children turn into little hyper hellions with no manners and a lot of verbal assault. Also, I'm just going to put this out there but kids that are 2 1/2 have no place in a classroom. When they cannot yet grasp a pencil and when bowel control is completely lacking, that is the time to keep them at home taped to a toilet. This is not the time to put them with other little kids where everyone is surprised by the eruption of stink that heralds a brown gift.
I have had some success though. A little boy who could not for the life of him focus on writing a single word, let alone a sentence can now sit largely unsupervised and write and illustrate an entire short story! I've realized the trick is bribery. Every kid has his/her price and it's only a matter of time before you figure it out. His was drawing. I promised him that if he wrote five good sentences, then he could draw for two minutes, et voila! Also, a little precocious genius three year old has ceased to be as frustratingly aggravating and stubborn as she used to be! She will now go almost the entire hour without saying, "no, I will not read" once and she only halfheartedly protests, "I have a cough, I have hiccups, I'm too tired!" I definitely put these in the win pile.
Now onto the truly exciting part: I have the new D7000 and it is wonderful! I love my gift of a D5000 but the D7000 has an auto-focus motor inside of it (which is so nice because it auto-focuses with my 50mm which is a pain to focus manually!). Before I purchased it, I had been worried about all these complaints that people seemed to be having but after reading Ken Rockwell's review, I put my doubts aside and it has been glorious.
I do not have any hot pixels (shiny lights that should not be in a shot) and non of my pictures are soft (unless I made a mistake). It's really solid too! I have a sizable bruise on my head because I accidentally whacked myself with it when I was taking it out of the case... It's nice having the ISO and the WB (white balance) buttons right on the outside.
Also, I just approved a comment on one of my earliest posts which brought to my attention just how very wrong and just how little I knew about cameras when I started! As a thank you and an "I'm sorry," here is the correct info:
Whenever there is a lot of light and you are manually adjusting the ISO, the ISO number should be low around 200-250 (even lower if you like). The darker a scene or area becomes, the more ISO you will have to use in order to make it lighter for your photo. If you use flash, adjust the ISO accordingly and shift it down again. When you start hitting a high ISO (past 2000-2500 and depending on the camera, maybe even higher!), you'll have a problem with noise. Noise is the grainy, kind of pixelated look that appears in the photo. If there is not much noise, then it is usually in the darker areas of the photo. If there is a lot of noise, then you can see it across the entire photo. My D5000 would have the strangest noise because I would take multiple shots under the same lighting, same ISO, same white balance but some photos would be really noisy while others were completely fine. I'm having some internet problems at the moment so I can't post examples but as soon as it's fixed, they'll be a-coming!
The D7000 has really smooth pictures but the one issue is that it forces me to step up my game! It is just such a powerful camera that if a lens isn't great or if I don't properly set up my camera, then the photos will accordingly not look the best. But if I'm able to do everything correctly, the photos are absolutely beautiful! I'm looking into getting a 35mm lens and a macro as well (probably the 105mm) but those will have to wait.
I love my job but it doesn't leave much time for photography (or blogging!) so I'm making a preemptive resolution to make more opportunities to post and to work on my photography website:
ceciliahphotography.com *no longer up*
Check it out if you haven't! Also, I'll be going to Tibet for New Years, so I'll hopefully get some spectacular shots in there!
Hope you enjoyed this =)
