I got a new camera. I’m over-the-moon excited. I’ll be able to take awesome, crisp friends and family pictures, fur-baby portraits and dreamy hued travel shots. You’ll see better blog photos too. A&S projects, events, garb, scenery, and action fighting pics. The possibilities are endless.

Right now I have no idea what all its buttons are or what the dials mean. Besides the usual zoom, flash and burst image buttons there’s a 4K mode, stereo microphone and HDMI socket. And there’s more…

You might ask why I didn’t save up for a DSLR camera. They are highly recommended.

I’m not making money with this blog so I don’t want its needed gear to be costly. This is suppose to be fun. Plus a DSLR with its extra lenses weigh twice what my Lumix does.

Like any new skill there’s a learning curve. You have to put in the time and effort to do it. My Lumix will be tough enough. A DSLR would be more so. The fancier the camera the harder it is to control. But this one I can do.

First I’ll figure out the basics, the automatic options in all their various modes. I’ve found YouTube tutorials to help with all that. Eventually I hope to grow to using its manual settings. I want to be able to control what the picture looks like when I make the shutter click. Sure I can edit and clean up pictures like I’ve done with my phone-photos. But the best pictures are created in the camera not by photo-chopping.

Until I understand how to work this thing I won’t be able to unlock its potential. And after that, there’s always something more you can learn. Different techniques, composition, and gear upgrades.

In the end it’s not about the camera, but the photographer. A camera is just another way to be creative and artistically express yourself. It works by looking outward while reflecting what’s going on inside you. Even when someone looks at my pictures, do they really know what I saw.

Related Prior Post:

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