Subscriber is me – Digital SLR Photography Magazine

No pictures today (again!)

Instead I thought I’d mention this magazine (again!) and say that my first copy as a subscriber arrived last night. I’ve been buying this for the last few months and some of the articles are brilliant.

While hunting for my chosen toy and debating the whole passage of time, I bought a few different magazines. My responses to them ranged from “I wanna spend how much???” to “I just spent £4 on a book of adverts!”. A lot of magazines seemed obsessed with selling me thousand pound lenses and cameras rather than telling me what was in my price range. Little things in Digital SLR Photography like how to make your own reflectors and how to improvise filter mounts make it so much more accessible to people on a budget.

It was their review of the D40X against the 400D helped push me into Canon’s laps (mmmmm comfy), and it was their features of David Nightingale (Chromasia) and other fantastic photographers which makes me want to take better shots.

For those trying to learn the art, the fact the provide the exposure settings for a majority of their shots is superb (and it’s why I do it to).

My one complaint is that their website doesn’t live up to the quality of the magazine. 

If you’re looking for a magazine on Digital SLR Photography you can’t beat this. It does exactly what it says on the tin…erm cover.

Learning To Snap

Picasa picked me…

I have no idea what other people are using to view image libraries. I’m sure there are some great tools out there, but when I first got a digital camera a friend recommended Picasa as a neat utility that did what I needed.

It provides a nice interface for scanning your images and number of functions including basic contrast, brightness and cropping. Most importantly when you’re a camera noob like me it has a patented(?) Google-esk button ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ which makes the changes it thinks the images need.

As a camera noob it’s been my stalwart photo utility since the E550 came to live with me.

Lately I’ve been playing with Gimp, but thats on my list of things I need to learn so it’ll be a while before I feel qualified to say anything about it other than “The name keeps making me snigger”

Almost forgot. Both Picasa and Gimp are free under their various license models.

Places to go, things to see

When I first started shopping for a digital camera and ended up buying my E550, there were two sites I found invaluable.

DPReview gave fantastic information about all the cameras in the market, ranging from my little point and click through to the market leading pro DSLR’s of the day. I used this site again when buying my 400D and was glad its only got better with age.

If you’ve ended up here and are thinking about buying a camera, then go there next.

I first came across Chromasia via an article in the Financial Times I think. the daily pictures are amazing. Of all the sites on the web, of all the pictures out there, David Nightingale is the person who drove me to do this. I’ve never spoken tot he man, never exchanged an email, never posted comments on his site, but I think his work is fantastic and if I ever get to be half as good I’ll be happy. 

Learning To Snap