Good weather for photography

First of all, Happy New Year to all of my blog readers!! It was a colder than usual year end this time. I hope all of you had a great holidays and wish you a happy and prosperous new year!

After getting my digital SLR, I have been reading about photography and experimenting a lot! Today I clicked this photo. It was a nice weather I could see till quite far over the horizon.

On the left side of the photo is Yokohama Landmark Tower. The red color of the sky is not a result of any editing or filter. I clicked the photo in following mode.

Lens:                55-250mm
Shutter Speed:  1/40
Aperture:          5.6
ISO:                 1600
White Balance:  Flash (I guess it was AWB)

I have to say, I got my camera in just about right time. This is the timing when skies are most clear in Japan. Also, Snow and subsequently Spring is waiting for me couple of months down the line, when I will have (hopefully) mastered basics of the digital photography.

There is neither dearth of good photographers or photography clubs in Japan, nor equipment, locations and subjects to shoot. I hope to utilize best of all..

Canon EOS 60D from kakaku.com

Finally it was delivered yesterday.

I ordered my first Digital SLR last week from kakaku.com. After much deliberation, research, comparisons and reading many reviews, I settled for Canon EOS 60D. In my opinion this particular model is a very good mix of close to professional features and ease of operations needed by beginners for a reasonable cost.



This was my first purchase through kakaku.com and for those who can read Japanese or get help, I suggest that kakaku.com is a great site which can save you around 20% to 30% on most of the items. For those who would rather touch and feel the purchase they are making, you still have an option of going to any big electronics shop like Yodobashi Camera or Biccamera and see the gadget there. Then you can come back to kakaku and choose the best deal. I have seen some foreigner painstakingly noting down prices of things they want at Akihabara but this site will save you a lot of time for sure.

I found that some of the nice features of kakaku.com are ease of use (if you know Japanese of course), wide range of products (almost any consumer goods) and wide range of dealers (from amazon to your local electronic shop). You can compare the products easily and can navigate to the purchase form right there.

Paying is easy too, most of the shops have online order forms and have option of Cash on Delivery. Although the dealer may charge nominal fees (somewhere around 1% of the purchase) if you choose COD.

By the way, this is the first photo I took!

My first experiment with panning. Not too great and had to take almost 15 shots to get that one right, but I found some of the points I need to improve already!

Look forward to some armature clicks.