Birthdays used to make me a bit manic-depressive. I’d anticipate it all year, build up expectations, then spend the entire birthday miserable because I ended up, say, receiving luggage for my birthday instead of a discman (this only sort of happened).
One of my favorite things about being an adult is birthdays are no longer a big deal. If I want to have a party, I plan one. And if I want a discman for my birthday, I budget it in (Ha! What a grown-up concept.) and it’s a done deal. (Alternatively, there are years where I really, genuinely don’t want anything for my birthday–and as a grown-up, that’s okay, too!)
This brings me to the real topic of this post–I got a new camera! For my birthday and Christmas! Because it was on super sale (more than is reflected on the Amazon link below) and various family members wanted to chip in! And because I’ve wanted one for a while now! Even though my birthday isn’t until November and Christmas isn’t, well, until December!
I got a Canon s95 and it is sweet. I used to have a Canon Rebel DSLR and it spoiled me for good in terms of image quality expectations… No point and shoot I’ve had (all hand-me-downs) since then have seemed to be worth the trouble to actually use. I’d heard such great things about the Canon S series, though, and felt strongly that a small point and shoot is a much more logical choice than a DSLR right now because 1) P has a DSLR and 2) I want something I can throw in my purse and whip out quickly. Also, my meager photography skills don’t warrant the financial investment of a DSLR!
Anyway, it arrived in the mail on Wednesday and I love it. It takes great shots, even in low light. I am so enjoying messing around with the manual controls.
We’ve been housebound because of the rain and A, my most promising model, refuses to cooperate, so I’ve had a tough time finding photography subjects. But below some examples of very low-light, no-flash shots that aren’t painfully grainy and terrible like the products of other point-and-shoots I’ve used. As you can see, they’re not meant to be artistic by any means, but I’m pretty pleased with the quality.
I’m usually quite liberal with post-processing but all of these images are untouched, save for cropping in the first shot.