Dramatically vivid, Spontaneously Pure Photography: The Nikon D3100

It's like ~~Christmas~~ non-denominational winter holiday all over again! I finally ordered it, and it should come tomorrow. I honestly don't even think i was this excited about a piece of technology before. Not my first computer, a Macbook G1. Not my second computer, some gateway atrocity. Not my ipad, xbox, or current laptop. Sure technology is nice, but none of them are mobile, in the sense that you can take them anywhere. You can't take a laptop and use its webcam to shoot a great photo. You can't express visual emotion, unless you are an expert at adobe CS.

I don't know where this sudden desire for a real camera came from. My Nikon S60 isn't broken, and has served me well.

What i think finally clicked was spending a day hiking with my friend Kyle Baker, who is a sub-professional photographer. He let me use his camera, and after not having a viewfinder for 3 years, i realized how much i missed one. He showed me his photos that had such depth and character to them.

I went to one of my schools plotters and printed out three of my best snapshots from my camera that day. I stared at them under the depressing fluorescent lighting of the A&D center's plot lab. Wissahickon Valley Park. No character. Just white snow with brown twigs sticking up. The stream in person, frozen over, looked so beautiful. You could see the small trickle of unfrozen water running on top of the ice below. But the camera i have butchered it with its auto-iso, unadjustable focal length, and horrible white balance.

Then came Forbidden drive. This my camera managed to not butcher. You can see the railing of the bridge act as a leading line, pulling your eye across the photo. Unfortunately it came out dark, something a D-SLR can compensate for.

Then my crowing failure, East Falls. Sure, it looks great. I put a good 10 minutes into composing this shot the right way. I tried different angles, and different perspectives. It looked amazing on a computer screen! But when i plotted it, and was able to see the full-sized 22x34 image at once, i realized how horribly flat it was. No depth. The leading line, the creek, lost in a wash of distraction by the waterfall, and bridge.

I think because of these three photos, as i stared at them that night, plotted, made me realize that a simple point-and-shoot camera will not cut it for Costa Rica. It is my goal to come home with high-focused pictures of fauna and flora, with their backgrounds gently blurred. So i have made the decision to move on. I sold my projector, and have purchased the following:

Bundled Together:

Nikon D3100 14.2MP Digital SLR Camera
Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AutoFocus-S DX Motorized Vibration Reduction Nikkor Zoom Lens

Additional Lens (on sale, and amazon had a promotion for an additional $100 off this specific lens, so for $75, normally $250, i felt it was a deal i could not pass up):