Rex mortuus est, vivat rex!

For years and years now I've been pining for the day we'd finally have affordable digital single-lens reflex cameras... not these little point and shoot toys that are more often used these days by people to make little AVIs of their grandchild singing the alphabet or the dog chasing a stick. Years ago I actually had a decent SLR camera, but that was the days of film. That meant paying to buy the film. Paying to develop the film. Paying to print the shots. And never knowing if they were any good at all till all this expensive nonsense was out of the way.

When digital cameras started coming out in the mid-90s, I was a quick adopter. I got a Kodak DC25 in February of 1997. It was just this tiny little thing; had a built-in flash, an LCD review, and held 17 or so 320x240 shots of low quality. But it was digital! No more buying film or getting it developed! I was hooked.

In fairly short order I blew through Kodak cameras (and money), moving on to the DC40 (held 24 good shots), the DC50 (had a zoom and you could plug in extra memory), and finally, about four years ago, the DC4800 I've been using ever since.


The outgoing king, the Kodak DC4800. Photographed using the Canon 350D.

The DC4800's a good camera. With a 256MB card in it, it produced about 260 decent photos at 3.1 megapixel size. It's been a superlative camera for capturing casual shots of places I've been. But I want to start experimenting and taking some shots that are outside the ordinary and the everyday, like the ones you'll see on daily dose of imagery. And so, today, I acquired the Canon 350D Rebel XT, the camera that takes the shots on that site. I don't mean to suggest I have that photographer's eye, and I certainly don't have his experience, but now I mean to start learning. From here on in, the shots you see here will be taken with the Rebel XT.

For you sentimentalists, fear not. The DC4800 is going to a good home; that of my friend P-Doug, who worked as a photographer and developer for 25 years before becoming an archivist; in exchange for a 1G CF card for the Rebel XT.


The incoming king, the Canon 350D Rebel XT. Photographed using the Kodak DC4800.