What I'm After

Here is what I want. I think I can get the camera body for about $600. Then I'll need a lens of some sort to start.

This is a Nikon D200. It's a little older, but is a pro level digital camera. I've looked at the D100, and it would be okay too, but is older still. The current iteration of this model is the D300 and there is also a D700. But these cameras are new enough that I'd be looking upwards of $2000 for the D300 and maybe twice that much for the D700! Yikes!

Christmas Photo

This is a shot I did at Christmas. Kind of a Norman Rockwell type setting. I hand held the shot using my wife's XTi. I adjusted the white balance so the color looked right. Even though there is some blurring from Summer moving, I think its still a great shot. Maybe I need to crop it a little??

Update

A few things going on. I FINALLY sold the Minolta kit on eBay! Whoo Hoo! Not for as much as I'd like, but hey, its a $100 more than I had with the camera just sitting in my closet! Now I need to list the Nikon, the broken Canon, some other electronic stuff, and probably the Yashica (like I'm really using it!). I'm also going to list the Canon camera bag. I was going to keep this one because I thought I would leaning towards a XTi. But my thinking has been more towards Nikon lately. I've been pricing old Nikon D100's on eBay. They sell for about $250 to $300 with out a lens. This is an older camera, but is pro level. I would still need to find a good lens. So this could be rather expensive. But my thinking is that I would be much happier with something like this as opposed to a pro-sumer or just consumer level camera. I've also priced the D200, which obviously is one step up from the D100. Newer technology, good lookng camera. Selling for about $600 to $700 with out a lens. So, that is the direction I'm going now. If that comes together, then I will want the Nikon camera bag I have.

I'm hoping that with selling a lot of my junk I can get a good portion of the money I need, then perhaps can take some from the tax return to make up the difference.

Stay tuned.

An update. Its been a long time since I've posted. All my plans have been pretty much on hold. I tried to sell my old camera gear on eBay, but didn't get even one bid. I may try again in the coming months. It seems that eBay is down all the way around. Maybe I should explore some other outlets. Other auction sites. We'll have to see.
I did something different a couple of days ago. Maybe it was about a week ago I got out our little Sony 8mm video camera. We bought this from a co-worker for like $35! Its not digital, but it is really nice. It was fun to play around with, and I had a lot of fun filming the kids playing outside. They really enjoyed watching themselves on the TV after I finished recording their activities. I think I would like to get more into video. I'm still very drawn to nature, so I'm sure my subjects are going to be mostly related to that area. I'd love to get a small digital camera someday.
I still have a big desire to get a digital SLR. I continue to see things everyday that I would like to photograph, I just need to have a camera so I can capture the world around me!

Slow Process

I guess I'm going to get this plan off the ground in baby steps. I actually took all of my photos of the gear I want to sell, and uploaded it to PhotoBucket

Now this makes my photos available for the eBay listings I need to do. All I have to do now is find the time, and convince my wife to help me get the listings up. She's really good at doing templates for auctions. These make the listings stand out from your average run of the mill listings.

Baby steps.

Musings on the future

I've been thinking a lot about my future and what I can do to get out of the rut I'm in. I used to think that I would NEVER want to do people photography, such as portraits or weddings. Lately though I've been reconsidering what I would be willing to do. With my listening to the Pro-Photo Show pod-casts and looking at various photos on the web, and then when I saw a wedding announcement magnet that I received with an absolutely awful photo on it, I thought "I can do better than that!" I like the idea of outdoor portraits. But I would be willing to do studio portraits. I still don't think I want to ever do weddings. But I suppose that eventually I might be persuaded to consider that as well. I want to just jump into this. Create a web site for my business, business cards, etc. I think I want to call it Elliott Leigh Strom Photography, or possibly Elliott Leigh Photography. Or I might go for ELS Photography, but not too sure about that one. I think the way to start would be to just start. I still need to get my own camera. So I need to sell the old stuff on eBay. For my business I would also want to offer commercial photography, product photography, possibly architecture, nature and aerial, etc. I think to get my feet wet would be to photograph people I know. Friends, family, folks from church. So anyway, those are the thoughts I have been having.

Maui Mist

Here's one of my favorite shots from my time in Maui several years ago. Original was in color. I like how the B&W looks.