Dear J: Fun With My New Camera
[J],
I have the Sony DSC-D700 camera. This camera, with a 48 MB memory card installed, will hold approximately 370 640 X 480 true color photos. Many different size memory cards are available.
The memory card system is much faster than a floppy disk in the camera and you can take many rapid-fire shots without having to wait for the floppy drive to “catch up”.
You can upload the pics from the memory card to the hard drive on your computer by removing the card from the camera, and plugging it into the supplied memory card reader, which you attach to your computer’s parallel printer port.
The battery lasts roughly two hours per charge when taking lots of pics with the flash and using the built in back-lit LCD viewer.
Depending on where you buy, you may purchase a 5-year parts and labor warranty (which I did) for $90. It seemed like a wise precaution, since a camera does not typically sit at home in the living room, but is out and about with you and so can easily be damaged if dropped. You can purchase a leather carrying strap that goes around your neck, to minimize the risks of dropping it.
This camera is Sony’s top-of-the-line model currently, and is generally very good. My only complaint is that the auto focus occasionally makes errors, and focuses on the wrong subject. This can sometimes lead to target objects and people in the foreground coming out blurry while things in the background are crystal clear. But once you are aware of this, it is very easy to correct for. After the auto focus has made its best guess and set the lens focal point, you can then use the manual focus knob for tweaking the setting.
On the “White Fire” picture: This was not taken at night. It was exposed during the afternoon at roughly 3:00 PM. However, the sky was extremely dark with portentous looking storm clouds. And the only bright area was the spot which I photographed, where the sun was trying to peak through.
I must head to town for a little afternoon bookshop browsing. I’m going to see if the shops here carry the book you suggested. If not, then I’ll order via Amazon.com.
Talk to you later.