After years (more like a decade) of putting it off, this week I acquired my first serious camera, being a Canon T6i. Coming from various smartphones and earlier point and shoot devices, the older T6i hit the sweet spot of price and features for myself.

The T7 was a similar price with less features, and the T7i was a noticeable price jump in my searches in Canada.

My interest in photography started around the late 2000's, first with a cheap point and shoot camera. At the time it did job for basic travel and car photos, especially in the era of cheap flip phone cameras. As this camera reached its limits, around the time of my first iPhone 3G, I bought a more advanced Fujifilm camera that was higher quality and sported 18x optical zoom, a lot for me at the time, while still less than the film SLR and DSLR options. This camera suited me well for various car show and race photography as an extreme amateur. Progressively it phased out in favour of more convenient smartphone cameras, even at the sacrifice of quality for years to come, and my interests shifted away as 2010 closed in.

Interest picked up again years later when in 2014, I became a big fan of Windows Phone and acquired the hallmark Nokia Lumia 1020, with its incredible 41 Megapixel camera and its smart software tricks.

Even a few years later when I moved onto other Nokia Lumia phones, I often kept the 1020 around as my convenient photography tool. It took several more years, around the time of my iPhone 8, before that newer phone was consistently taking better pictures.

From that point, through multiple generations of iPhone (and my sidestep into a OnePlus 7T), the phone cameras continued to improve and I was able to capture some great photos with ease, with some limits. The modern phones really have eliminated most of the need for regular point and shoot cameras (if you already have a higher end phone, if not, obviously their expense is much higher).

This led me back around to this week, I felt it was finally well past time to really get into photography, study the craft further and purchase equipment I could learn and advance with. Hence, my initial gear set being:

• Canon T6i
• Canon 18-55mm STM Lens
• Canon 55-250mm STM Lens

With this gear, I have plenty to work, learn and practice with. I’m impressed with the kit right from the start, as even a fully automatic mode shot like this, with no effort feels better than what I’ve captured on my iPhone (even though I’ve had great iPhone shots too):

My next task is to continue reading and applying all I learn about topics like the exposure triangle, depth of field, and types of results that can be achieved with different lenses, shutter speeds and aperture settings, with more in my reading and video tutorial queues.

In the future, I have earmarked my equipment expansion to include a few more items:

• Quality Aluminium Tripod
• Canon 10-18mm STM Wide Angle Lens
• Telephoto Lens of some type, this I still need to research options, as I expect the budget manual options online are mixed on quality or value.

All of this will come later though, I have plenty to learn and practice with using my initial purchase. I look forward to sharing what I learn and any photos worth sharing here and via my Snap.as photo galleries.

#Photography #Canon #T6i