Welcome Nikon

I took the plunge earlier today and I bought myself a small portable digital camera so that I can take more photos when I am at school and don’t have my Canon with me. This one easily fits into my pocket and I have already witnessed how much easier it is to just whip out and capture a quick memory. :) I also have the start on a workflow that will let me go from camera to website in only a couple of keystrokes. I’ve also added a bit of photoblogging hocus-pocus to my site which allows certain posts – like this one to be considered a photo post and the site can automatically extract the Exif data in the image to provide the photo specifications above. There is still a bit more I would like to do – perhaps separate out my photo posts from my regular posts so they can be browsed separately. This post for example is a hybrid post and I’m not sure what I would do with that. Rest assured that I will not be removing the photo gallery I have now.

As far as the camera itself is concerned, it is a Nikon Coolpix 5600. It is quite light and small, which was the point and takes up to 5.1 megapixel photos. It has a 3x optical zoom and your standard collection of scene settings and menu options. It works with my laptop and it seems to have a really quick start up time, so I am happy. The photos themselves are clear and the colour reproduction seems good. I had been looking at an Olympus camera at the same price, but the salesman convinced me of the merits of this one, including the use of standard AA batteries and the cheaper SD memory card. I didn’t think about it until I got back to my apartment but I just bought a camera from the ‘other side’. As a Canon user, Nikon is like the bad guy, so I did feel a little bad about that – kind of like I cheated on my Canon, with the enemy. But I didn’t see any Canons with the specs I was looking for at the price I wanted – at least at that store – so that is how the cookie crumbles. I’ll cope.