A New Adventure

Last week, I bought a camera. I've wanted one for a while, but I'd never really looked around for something that would fit my needs. A few of my friends and family are actual photographers, and I knew that I didn't want to do what they do. I'd be carelessly jumping into a deep end to swim with reel big fish.

I haven't owned a dedicated camera in over a decade. Ever since 2010, the only camera I've owned came with an iPhone attached to it. However, while the iPhone X's camera is great, it's just not enough for a whole myriad of situations, and in the last year I've found myself ever more limited by what my phone's camera could and couldn't do.

There's an old adage: "the best camera is the one you have with you", and if I was going to have this camera with me, even a fraction of the time that I have my phone with me, it had to meet some pretty strict qualifications: It had to be really versatile (inter-changeable lenses was a hard requirement), it had to be compact enough to take almost anywhere, and it had to be a camera that could grow with me as I delve into this new-fangled world. So I talked to some people, read a bunch of articles, watched a bunch of reviews, and got this:

The Sony α6000

I've heard from quite a few people that Sony's α6000 and α6400 are really good for people who want a great camera, but aren't willing to dive into DSLRs. I don't know much about that second bit, but that description matched me to a T. As I've only had it a week so far, my opinions are still riddled with Ney Toy Syndrome. That said, I really like this camera. It's small and light enough to fit in the spare pocket of my daily carry bag, and it uses Sony's E-Mount which means that there's tons of compatible lenses, making it really versatile.

I ended up getting the α6000 mostly because of the price. The α6400 was more than I wanted to spend and anything below the α6000 didn't have a viewfinder, which was a dealbreaker. I'm still rocking the kit lens for now, but I plan on getting a 50/55mm Prime lens pretty soon. Before that though, I need to get a much more intuitive grasp of how to properly use what I have, and it'll probably take me a while to get the basics down.

A Checkpoint in Time

While I'll probably be posting most of the good shots I take to my photoblog, below are a few of my favorite shots from the last week. I'm posting them here so that they serve as a record of my skills as a photographer right now. Hopefully, as time goes on and my skills improve, I'll look back on these pictures like I look back on old code I've written: with fond memories, and mild disgust.