CAMERAS

Luis and I both took photography in Mr. Ludwig's class back in Churchill County High School. If memory serves, we were the last to use the old darkroom in the classroom upstairs, and the first to use the new photography building by the athletic field, with its fancy-pants "no door" darkroom that you could just walk right into. We were developing, dodging, and enlarging, and wandering around taking photos whenever we could get permission.

Our first few photos-- well before that whole "internet" thing that all the kids are talking about nowadays- were taken with 35mm film cameras so long ago I don't even remember what they were.

Back in 2000 when we first started this web page we realized that we would never be able to afford such frequent visits to Fotomat to develop all those photos, and we invested in those new digital cameras, which were really something. My first model was an Olympus D360-L. It actually had 1.3 megapixels, did great closeups, and easy to operate with one hand. Retail was $399 but I'm sure I got it for a lot less than that.

As I recall, Luis was taking film photos with his trusty Nikon, but soon purchased a 2 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 2500. I had to counter this threat by getting an 4 megapixel Olympus C-4000. Momentarily stunned, Luis answered this threat to his manhood by replacing his Nikon with a 3.1 megapixel Fujifilm S602 which would also take movies.

This challenge would not stand. I took advantage of the quantum leap in camera technology and got the 9 megapixel Fuji S9000. But why wasn't Luis worried?

Probably because he had already planned to replace his camera with a 12 megapixel Canon Rebel T3 DSLR. As the rest of the world looked on in shocked horror, I replaced my Fuji with an 18 megapixel Nikon COOLPIX S9500.

Rather than wait for Luis to answer this challenge, I've already purchased a 24 megapixel Nikon D5300 DSLR. But camera wars are probably far from over. Although judging from the look on my wife's face when I told her I was buying the Nikon, it's probably my last camera for a while. I don't like sleeping with one eye open.

Not unlike the horsepower ratings of 1970's car ads, you probably want to look beyond megapixels when choosing your camera, and we're not going to attempt to explain all the different types of technology available to you. But here are a couple of things to think about.

A small, portable camera that's easy to operate with one hand is nice, especially if you're on a quad. Many cameras have "dust-proof" options which you will find handy to have. If you're going to just post photos on Facebook, you probably won't need a $45,000 Hasselblad H5D-200c. However, if you want to eventually print a photo or two, higher resolution is probably better.

While we are technically professional photographers (we have fooled people into paying us to take a few pictures) there are people who have forgotten more than we'll ever know about photography, so we're not experts by any stretch of the imagination.

However, some of our photos done turned out real nice. All our photographs are protected by copyright laws, so if you use them without permission, why, we'll be very cross and sue you. You should see our lawyer. He blots out the sun. If you want to use one, just got to the "About" page and click on the link that says "email us" and tell us why, and where. It's that simple.

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