Katie Cook is a Blogger

My niece Katie is now blogging, http://www.katiecook.us/blog . She is producing some amazing photos on her blog.  Her butterfly photos are like looking at the real thing.  They are freaking awesome. 

Her first post talks about how she ended up with a Nikon D100 and how I liked to help her spend her money.  I do freely admit that I do like to help her spend her money.  I like to spend her dad’s money as well.  If you are reading this, I would probably like to spend your money too. Anyway, Katie only told her part of the story. Well, here is my part of the story that she didn’t tell…

So she arrives at my house showing off her brand spanking new camera.  WOW — once I got my hands on the camera I had some serious envy.  That camera felt solid like a camera should, not the light weight plastic camera I was using. The frustration of pushing the shutter and waiting 1/2 second before the camera took a picture was gone!   The D100 instantly took pictures.  And it took many pictures in a row as fast as I could press the shutter.  And the photos she was getting out of the camera was just down right insane.  And...and…and…  yeah yeah I could go on forever talking about her camera. Well she left for home after the Rolex weekend, she took her camera with her.  How rude!  She could have at least left it with me for several months don’t you think?  But she didn’t.

I started to jones over missing her camera.  So I started to investigate digital SLR’s.   At the time, you really only had 2 choices, unless you wanted to hock your house for a high end professional camera.  The two choices were the Nikon D100 and the Canon 10D.  I searched the Internet trying to figure out which one was better. The bottom line kept coming down to if you had Nikon glass, get the D100.  If you had Canon glass, get the 10D.  Glass is slang term for a lenses.  Well, the only glass I had was the kind you drink out of.  So the recommendation to me was get either — you can’t go wrong.

So that said, I went down to the local camera store in Lexington, Murphy’s.   I talked with the knowledgeable sales guy who pretty much said the same thing, get the camera for the glass you already have.  If no glass, it didn’t matter.  But he did recommend Canon for two reasons.  (1) he was a Canon shooter, although he wasn’t digital and shot film, and (2) they didn’t have a D100 in stock, but did have a 10D in stock. After playing with the 10D for a little bit, I was sold.  So I bought the Canon 10D, a case, 1 GB 32x flash card, and a Canon 28–135mm IS lens.  The charge as I recall was a little over $2600 — or about 5 times more than any other camera I have ever purchased up to that point. 

To re cap; I was fat, dumb, and happy with my digital camera until Katie came to visit and show me her D100.  Since that date, she has cost me a small fortune in photography equipment.  But even so, she helped me rekindle my love of photography and added quite a bit of joy to my life.  My photos and I are in her debt.