Introduction from Akron Ohio!

[NickRummy]

Great forum, looks like I can learn a lot! I guess I'll give a "quick" intro as to why I'm here.

I've always loved taking photos. I got a Fuji S7000 years back and loved taking photos with that. Never really read up to much about photography. Just snapped away and taught myself some manual functions through trial and error. That camera started to show it's age and had some mechanical issues so for a while I stopped taking photos. Where I work got a D50 a while back and my friend (who is a member here I believe) got a D80. Those really opened up a new world to me and I read up here and there about photography basics just so I knew a little about the work camera.

I bought my wife a Canon SX110 for christmas to replace the S7000 so we had something to take photos with. She wanted something small and easy to use and I wanted manual features but that camera just couldn't hold my interest at all. Great for her but not my thing I guess. Just something easy to carry around when needed.

Well a few weeks ago I borrowed works camera (D50) to photograph a friend's baby's baptism. I also used it to take some photos of my nephew's first time swimming. Well this just opened up the door to me. The baptism photos were difficult to get correct since the lighting was bad and I mainly used auto to get by, the photos of my nephew turned out pretty well since it was outside but there were things I wanted to change but wasn't comfortable trying since we didn't have time. These challenges made it really interesting to me.

We have a baby on the way due in September and I want to be able to take good photos whether it be optimal or bad conditions. So I decided I wanted a good camera and I wanted to learn techniques to do this. I found a great deal on a D200 with a Nikkor 18-200mm 3.5/5.6 VR lens and a Nikkor 28-200mm AF lens. I'm actually getting rid of the 28-200 for something like the Sigma 18-50mm lens.

Anyways, so that is why I'm here. Now time to get reading!

 

[Nicholas James Photo]

Welcome to TPF and congrats on the happy news for September, keep us posted

 

[NickRummy]

Thanks! Great name you're using by the way. My name is James Nicholas haha!

I've finally had a chance to play a little with the camera. It's hard to put it down sometimes :mrgreen:

There is one thing I'm trying to read up on that I was REALLY interested in before my old camera went kerplunk and that's macro photography. The strange thing is the D50 and D80 I used had an actual macro mode or button to use but I don't see anything of the sort on the D200? I've been reading up on macro photography and finding that the lens really makes a good difference . So now I'm not actually set on getting the Sigma 18-50 just yet but who knows. It looks like getting a 100-150mm macro lens would be really nice but I want to read up and understand the bellows and extensions I've been reading about.