I haven’t really taken my camera out for an all-day shooting experience yet, but right off the bat, I can say that I already love it.

My old camera, The Olympus Evolt E-500, treated me fantastically for the 2+ years that I worked with it, but it was slow to focus and snap an image whenever it was low light situation. This possibly could have been a result of the fact that I was just working with the in-camera pop-up flash, or because I never read the book and learned how to work the camera the way God and the Olympus Engineers intended. Either way, it would focus (or try to focus) and focus and never snap.  I can’t tell you how many pictures I missed because my camera and I couldn’t get our flash-act together.  The 40D has a no flash setting, allowing me to turn it off so it never bothers me.  Even with the no flash setting in moderate-to-low light (the area in which it was difficult, but not impossible, to take a picture with the olympus) the 40D shoots like a champ.  It responds beautifully to my commands and never misses a beat.

Yesterday I took the 40D into Katy’s room for some real tests.  Shooting in the DARK was impossible with the Olympus.  Katy’s room in the late afternoon is really dark.  The strange dimensions of the room (10′ X 27′, with barn-ish slanted ceilings) combined with the paint color make Katy’s room look something like one would imagine the inside of the body to look like.  Often I’ll go in there to borrow (steal) some shoes or a jacket, and feel like I’m diving into my own intestinal system.  There is just one window at the very end of the room. Here’s my point: it’s dark.  The same kind of DARK that was debilitating to the Olympus.  So with the lights off, I stumbled through her room taking pictures of anything and everything I could see well enough to focus on.  It was so dark that in most of the pictures, I was having to focus on the reflection of the light from the window in a teeny bit of glass, or plain out guessing on the focus spot.  By the time I was done shooting the room, I was jumping for joy.  With the simple use of some prop-it-up tri-pods, the Canon captured some really cool images.  Captured! Images! In the dark! Ah!

Zack looked at me a little funny when I was telling him about how exciting this was to me.  I guess he thought it was goofy because I also bought a flash over the weekend.  (I got a 430EX, I couldn’t justify getting the 580, when the 430 is all the flash I need, so if you’re a naysayer, HUSH. I love my flash and I don’t want to hear it.)  There was really no good reason for me to be taking 2″ exposures in the pitch black of Katy’s bedroom, cause I could have lit up that place like a Miami Christmas!  But I didn’t care about that. I did care that I wanted to take pictures in a dimly lit room, and so did my new camera.  

I love it when a plan comes together.

—

In other news, the laziness that occurs between school sessions has officially settled upon me.  Other than tinkering about with my camera and making dinner with last night, I can officially say that I’ve done nothing productive with this week thus far.  Every day this week my one and only goal has been to go to the grocery store, and I have yet to accomplish that one measly task.  

This is especially shocking because I am so awesome at coming up with things that I HAVE TO BE DOING RIGHT NOW when I absolutely can not do them.  Last weekend I was staring down the nose of 4 tests, one of which was the nursing school equivalent of the SATs, and all I ever wanted to do was fold laundry, clean out every drawer in the house, bleach the grout in the bathtub and personally groom every animal in a 6 block radius.  I wanted to clean out and detail my car, mow the lawn, plant flower beds and get a haircut.  But I couldn’t. I had to sit there and write out 1,000 note cards.  So many note cards that even today there is a visible indention into my right pointer finger and thumb. 

But now?  Now that I have a week of freedom?  A week wherein I can do whatever I want to do and nobody can say, “Sarah, where is that on your priority list?” Now, I am sitting on my butt, drinking Middle Sister red wine and reading The Bell Jar.  And it is perfect.  The laundry might get done, and it might not.  The car will probably get cleaned out, but the grout probably won’t.  I don’t care.  This week is so fantastic because of its nothingness; I could not ask for anything better.  Not even perfect flower beds could top sitting here in a pair of Zack’s boxer shorts, not being at the grocery store.  I can always go to the store tomorrow.