Busier than a one armed drummer...

in an all night rock concert. Sorry, couldn't help myself. Just saw Def Leopard this week on the "Dancing with the Stars" results show. So between family visiting, hockey playoffs, work, and all the stuff I'm playing with gadget wise it's like whew I need a vacation. Okay so I'm on a little mini vacation, took a couple days off to spend with the family.

Just for reference its my birthday this weekend so I got some new gadgets. More specifically, I bought a Nikon D40 digital camera and a 55-250mm IS lens for my Canon. Yes I now own two digital SLRs but I found changing lens all the time a pain in the butt. Now I have a great little camera to handle the everyday family shots etc. It was a great bargain cost wise and of course it comes with the 18-55mm kit lens. Now I can cover most of my shooting needs between the two. I still need a super-wide and the Canon 10-22mm is one of the best but that can wait for another time.

So what do you do when you get a new camera. Why take shots of course. But how do you share them? Well I've had a Flickr account for a while but have never posted my shots. I have a few on facebook but mainly family photos to share with friends and family. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my own work so they never seem quite good enough to post. Well, if you never post, they are never seen, commented on, and we'll never learn or share how we made the shots. This all got started because a co-worker has started into photography and posted shots with his new Canon XTi. He knew I just bought my new lens and wanted to know how the 55-250 shot since he was considering buying it. So I decided to heck with it and just posted the shots unedited. The first shots I took with the Nikon were amazing.  I created a panoramic of our backyard and didn't even use a tripod. Just handheld from the deck and fired off about six shots.

I used CS3 to stitch them together but no other image adjustments.  The 55-250 worked great also.

These were taken at the full 250mm from the deck with no tripod.  Again just handheld and no image adjustments other than resizing for the web. The IS (image stabilization) of this lens really pays off.  I wouldn't say they are "tack sharp" but they are pretty sharp for just handholding.  If you interested in photography or why I bought a Nikon D40 instead of the newer 40x visit Ken Rockwell's site.  Click on the recommended cameras link. Oh, and by the way, I picked up mine for even less that what is listed there.

So why Flickr and not Facebook?  Well for one thing I can pull my photostream into my facebook profile and for another I can easily display the photos on my HDTV for the family thru Apple TV.  Add to that the fact that I like the free upload application better than facebook's own and there you have it in a nutshell.