My New Baby

I have a new baby. She doesn’t have a name, but I’m not really sure people name this kind of baby…

Yep, I upgraded my camera. Helloooooooooo, Nikon D7000!

There wasn’t anything “wrong” with my D3000, but it was holding me back business wise. See, there would be situations where there wasn’t really enough light to get an adequate picture. One of the many settings you can change on a DSLR is the ISO, and the higher the ISO number, the more of the available light is let into the camera. (Aperture is also key in getting light into the camera, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.)

You with me still?

Most of my pictures are taken with an ISO at 400. While my D3000 would let me set the ISO up to 1600+, the picture quality would be terrible if I used that high of a setting. Terrible. Seriously, I tested it.

So typically, if I had to let more light into my camera (because the light level where I was taking the photograph was kind of low) then I would bump it up to 800. It wasn’t great, and it meant more work in Photoshop to reduce the “noise” or “grain”, but it was acceptable.

For example, even though my living room has a huge, picture window, the early morning light is terrible for pictures. The pictures, even at ISO 800 would be so grainy and terrible that I wouldn’t even bother trying to “fix” them.

But look at this!

Specs: F 2, 1/50, ISO 1600

ISO of 1600 people! Thank you, Nikon D7000! There was a tiny bit of noise, which I cleaned up in Photoshop, but it wasn’t even the same amount of noise I was experiencing at only ISO 800 with my old camera.

So what’s all this mean? It means new capabilities open up to me for my business. It means not being a ball of stress if I have a newborn session and someone’s house doesn’t have a ton of light. It means being open to doing more Lifestyle sessions in people’s homes, which is something I’m dying to try.

Beyond the better ISO, this camera also has 2 card slots – hello automatic back-up so I don’t have to worry about card failure! The camera has more focal points, which is already giving me sharper pictures. The camera can handle more frames per second (FPS) than my old one could, which should come in mighty handy when Lily starts running or I’m chasing after toddlers at a portrait session.

All this isn’t to say my D3000 doesn’t take fantastic pictures, because it certainly does! Look at this cute one I took of Lily last week…

Yep, she’d just had a cookie and I do believe she liked it!

Or how about this one, from today (yes, today. See my D3000 was only 2 clicks away from picture # 30,000…. I couldn’t leave it just shy of that milestone!)

Still perfectly nice for every day pictures! However, I won’t be keeping the camera, which is a little bittersweet. After all,  this was the camera I learned on! The camera I started my business with, and the camera I took my sweet girl’s first picture with. Sentiment aside, this camera has a lot of life left to give someone else, so I’m going to get it cleaned and then I’ll sell it.

So there you have it – my new baby! A baby that came a few months earlier than I anticipated, but when I saw one for regular price (not being price gouged) and in stock, I jumped on it!