Taking Sonya Out for a Spin
The camera I picked after weeks of looking has finally arrived! After much rumination I decided I’m better off with a Sony RX100 M3. I initially looked at Canon beginner cameras but found that for my needs—which is really to take photos of my kids, sceneries, and happenings while out and about—I want something portable and not as fumbly with the settings for a beginner like me. This is my first ever camera after all!
Greg helped me pick out this camera because my head was spinning from all the technical information that made no sense to me. The other one on the shortlist was a Lumix but after checking Amazon reviews and a few photo blogs and videos, Sony won me over.
I took it with me for the last 3 days just to feel comfortable with the gadget and its functions, so the photos captured below were snippets from my daily errands and the family weekend walk to the city center. Watching my 3 kids grow up too quickly makes me want to bottle up these few summers I have with them as my babies, so I’ve taken quite a lot of photos of them already (many I’m keeping to myself and printing out as keepsake).
A few notes about the post-processing before I show you the photos: I’ve learned that it does take a while to get the pictures to look right! I’m using a very simple photo editing software called Photoscape to fix basic elements of the photo. I’ve also optimized the size of the photos for this blog. Since I still have ways to go to understand optics and the manual functions for aperture, ISO, and exposure, I’ve mainly switched between scene selections and auto mode.
Ok, picture time.
First up from my daily walk. I’m so glad I took a photo of this 1960s Fiat parked in front of the small workshop specializing in repairing/maintaining older models because this one disappeared the day after.
Playing here with the macros and taking photos of one of my favorite subjects, flowers! Greg asked why I need to take my own photos of roses when a simple Google search would get me photos taken by professionals. And I told him that it’s got something to do with the emotional connection. I was there, I saw the flowers. And also, if you live in the same street long enough, you’ll know that the flowers you saw from this summer probably won’t be the same in the next one.
Below you’ll find some snaps from my walk around the city. It was quite sunny, so some images initially came out odd. i did some minor post-editing to fix the lighting. The second to the last picture is a nice window from the 16th century.
At the city center, we saw a ball being rolled by a few people as part of the pilgrimage activities in Aachen. This art project was led by Garvin Dickhoff.
The four main reasons why I bought the camera.
I hope to take more in the coming weeks because, with the summer still in front of us, there’ll be many opportunities to see nature and other places with my small family in tow!
