Living with a DSLR

I have had my Eos 400D close to a week now, so it's time to reflect.

Camera is a camera, right? Well, yes. But it's amazing how things change when moving from a pocket-camera (in my case, Ixus 500) to a DSLR. What changes am I talking about here? Well, here's few:

Control. In my previous camera I could make "suggestions" to the camera, and all I could do then was to hope that the camera agreed with me. And I could never make long and short exposures work properly. The pictures ended up being under- or over-exposed. Not so with the new camera. I can tell the camera EXACTLY what I want it to do, and it will do it, no matter how stupid my demands are. And the problem with exposures? Gone. Well, I do get over- or under-exposed pics now and then, but this time I can change the settings and fix it. I can finally take pictures that really show movement. I can finally play around with light and depth-of-field.

Feel. My old camera was silent when I took a picture. The new camera? It actually makes a real sound when taking the picture. Now, you might think that the sound does not matter. But it does. The act of taking a picture is so much nicer with the new camera than in the old, because you get real audible feedback. I sometimes take pointless pictures with the camera just because it feels so good to take a picture. Also, the new camera lets you have a proper grip on the camera (although the Eos xxxD-series does not have the best grip in the market), whereas with the old camera I just held it in front of my face. Also, the camera weights more, which is a good thing. It doesn't move around as easily as the old camera, thanks to the added weight (and better grip).

Quality. The pictures I take with the Eos look better. It's as simple as that. And I can use humungous resolutions, and I can take RAW-pictures. Hell, the smallest resolution I can use with the Eos is only slightly smaller than the biggest resolution in the Ixus!

Speed. With the old camera I could take one picture ever 2-3 seconds or so. With the new camera I can take up to 3 pictures a second. So I can take more pictures in a limited time. I can then discard the poor pictures and keep the best. With the old camera, I could take maybe 1-2 pictures of something happening. And those pictures were the only ones I had. If they sucked, there was nothing I could do. Now I can pick and choose which pics to keep. 2-3 pictures suck? No problem, since I took maybe 5-6 pics, so I still have few decent pics to choose from. So the speed drives the overall quality up.

Those are the four biggest changes I have experiences. And the camera has in many ways changed other things as well. These days I go out quite often, just so I could take pictures. The Mrs. is happy as well, since we now take long walks, whereas befire I liked to stay indoors. I also take a lot more pictures these days than I did before. I might post some as time goes on :).

In short: I still think that the new camera was propably the best purchase I have made in quite some time.