Pssssst! I have a new camera.

So, you see, my old camera (a lovely Nikon D70) somehow wound up with all sorts of dust and crap on the sensor; every single photo required painstaking effort in Photoshop to make it look half-way decent. I was afraid to attempt a fix, myself. The sensor is a very delicate piece of equipment and I didn't want to make it worse. I mean, sure it was dirty, but the camera was useable!

I inquired at a camera store months ago while visiting my hometown -- I remembered that once, way back in my film days, I'd had a similar problem and the camera store man just blasted the camera body with a very strong shoot of sanitized air; maybe they could fix a digital SLR just as easily? But no, the lady said; they'd need to send it off to their workshop for two weeks and beaucoup de bucks. I said no thanks; I wasn't local, and even if I were I wouldn't want to be without it for so long.

I figured I could take it in to a new camera shop when we moved. I mean, really, we were going to a land with stores! A Super Walmart! More than one grocer (where they presumably refrigerate perishables ... though that's another story for another day)! I thought that certainly there would be a camera shop to which I could bring my D70 for repair. After all this time, and all the pointless Photoshopping of dust particles, I'd even be willing to wait a couple weeks. But it turns out that there's not a real camera shop here or within a reasonable distance -- only generalized electronics stores that happen to sell cameras along with everything else. Hardly the expertise I'd hoped for.

So I bit the bullet. I tried to fix it myself. I don't think I broke the camera, so that's good, but I certainly didn't get the sensor cleaned, either. :-P

As a final option, I thought I could mail it somewhere. To Nikon itself, even. But as I browsed around the web, alternately researching camera repair and drooling over other lovelies (it's amazing how expensive they can get!), I stumbled into the refurbished section of Adorama.com. The Nikon D60s seemed cheap-ish (for a DSLR), plus they had the added bonus of a self-cleaning sensor! Just what I need, dirty girl that I am (lol). I read the reviews, which were overwhelmingly positive -- and not just for that particular model of camera, but for that model refurbished. No slap-dash, throw 'em back in a box hack job from Nikon U.S.A., no sir! The camera, most reviewers said, might as well have been brand spanking new. Just way cheaper.

So I got it.

Yay!

I'm not entirely clear on how Nikon names their models; you'd think that going from a D70 to a D60 would be a step back. It's true that my new camera is more advanced hobbyist than professional, but it has more pixels than my old one, it has that newfangled self-cleaning sensor technology, and while the interface is slightly different than my D70 it doesn't lack any of the D70's features. It feels like a step up (without being a step way up to the $2k models I would looooooove but probably don't need). I also think the D60 must be a newer release, because while Photoshop CS2 had no trouble recognizing RAW files from my old camera (RAW files, for you who are uninitiated, are like digital negatives that you can develop in your digital dark room, rather than .jpg image files which just are what they are) CS2 couldn't open the files from my new camera. So (*cough!*) I upgraded my version of Photoshop, too.

I didn't tell DH any of this. He knew I was looking for solutions to my dirty camera problem. He knows that solutions to camera problems are not free. He knows that I, as the family treasurer, have a good sense of what we can and cannot afford in elective purchases. And really, I wouldn't have done it if we couldn't afford it or if it were even cutting it close, but we're fine! The new job came with a better salary -- and yeah, sure, he's the one making the money but I'm living with the ILs. I love them, don't get me wrong -- but I'm living with the ILs. I've earned a new (used) camera, lol. He was there when the package arrived. "What's that?" he asked. "My refurbished camera," I said, a statement which was 100% accurate but which he may have construed to mean "that's my trusty old D70, back from repair." Or he may have known it was new. Or he may have since figured it out. :-P

I don't think he'd care either way, honestly. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea that he's controlling about money or begrudges me my creative outlets so far as we can afford them (which is why there is no $2k camera in my future) or that he belittles my lack of salary for the very real work I do of taking care of his children (and living with the ILs). His paycheck is our money, together; it's family money. He would probably even consider my purchase, elective though it is, a legitimate expense. But we used to be poor -- fairly recently, even. Poor enough that I'd have to agonize over the impulse buy of a tube of chapstick at the checkout line; I never spent money on myself. We got paid only once a month, a ridiculous, measly amount that we had to stretch thinner than tissue.... I'm good at frittering away small bits of money here and there (which then add up to large bits), but I still balk at the big purchases. Especially big purchases that mostly just benefit me. It's my own issue, not his.

But I still haven't told him more explicitly about the new camera. D'oh.

Anyway! So yeah, long story told long, there you have it. I love my new Nikon D60. It takes beautiful, clean photographs. I haven't done a real honest-to-goodness photo shoot with it yet (Mary, we need to get back on the Challenge wagon!), but here are a few pics I've taken:







Maybe I can convince the girls to do a real photo shoot with me sometime soon.

(Though I like the kids-in-the-wild photo style -- tromping through fields of tall grass, or chilling on a fallen tree, that sort of thing -- but DH has me terrified of chiggers and ticks with their Lyme disease and mosquitoes with their malaria and West Nile virus. How do kids ever play outside in humid places? We had bugs in the West, but mostly just icky ones, not life-threatening ones! Eeew, eeew, eew. I can hardly stand it. I'd love to photograph them in flowy dresses, but to get them outside in the wild flowers and weeds I'd have to put them in long pants and duct tape the ends of their jeans to their legs. Which is not a suggestion DH has made -- in my neurosis, I carry everything too far -- but still. It seems reasonable, right? Lyme disease, if not caught early, is incurable and can mess you up for life! And those ticks are small little buggers who like to hide in hair, so what if I missed one? Waaaah! Nature. Pleh. I know I need to get over it -- or at least save this rant for a completely other post, lol. *Sigh.*)

Welp. Yeah, that's the story. Expect to see more pictures here again (and/or on my attention whoring plog Wherein I Post Photos). Time for bed now. :-)


~RCH~