Sulkyblue's Blog

I've finally made a notable dent on my photos from Washington! Celebrations are somewhat limited as this happy occasion only actually marks about halfway through the collection, but I figured I'd post some of them anyway.

plenty more at flickr

I had a really lovely weekend. A very civilised Saturday taking a picnic out to Windsor Great Park with shuripentu, gaspodog, karne_k and Mouse. We sat and ate, then walked and watched bunnies and birds, then it all got a bit warm and tiring so we went home. On the way back my car ticked over to 60,000 miles exactly as I braked to a halt for a traffic jam on the M4 elevated section, symbolic of how many of the 5,000 miles I've put on my car have been spent. We polished off the evening with a superb Doctor Who, Confidential and Top Gear and watched no stupid talent hunt shows. Yay us!

On Sunday I trudged out to Ealing to have breakfast with James. The Slug and Lettuce we usually go to had run out of bacon *and* smoked salmon, which was a very poor showing. So we made up for our disappointment by going to Starbucks as well. I spent the afternoon sorting photos from the previous day (more photos), I hadn't actually done much more than use the auto settings on my camera, must try harder. Also polished off the last episodes of NCIS season 4 (meh) and Superman Returns (blergh). The GP however was absolutely superb - thrills, spills, and miscellaneous ills for just about everyone except the amazing Lewis Hamilton who just appeared to be in a class of his own. A well deserved victory and a brilliant race.

Some of my highlights:
When asked over the pit radio how the car was, Coulthard replied "It won't go, it won't stop and the traction control is awful. It's lots of fun to drive".

As a camera man spots Michael Schumacher in the pits, Martin Brundle commented "I was doing tequila shooters with this man last night and I have a headache, hope he does too."

Anthony Davidson apparently hit a beaver! "It is such a shame about the beaver. It had it in for me I'm sure"

Takoma Sato overtaking Kimi Raikkonen! Just hilarious!

Robert Kubica came out of this terrifying crash with a sprained ankle.

I find myself simultaneously planning several different big spends. There's no real financial justification for most of these, but they won't bankrupt me either. The idea of a new car is bubbling away in the back of my head and pencilled in for the end of the summer or there abouts. I'm just about to book myself a weekend holiday, probably to Barcelona and I suddenly realised that it was silly to go on holiday and then buy a new camera when I got back. So now I'm looking at cameras that are more expensive than my holiday.

I hereby open the floor to recommendations. I would like:
- A digital slr
- That can take/make the funky hdr pictures
- Preferably uses SD cards as I have several of those
- Preferably takes standard AA batteries, I like using the rechargable ones and having the flexibility to obtain more in case of emergency.
- Hoping for around the 300quid mark, up to 400 or even 500 if someone made a very compelling arguement.

The kind of photos I take can be seen here. I don't take pictures of people and rarely take photos indoors. I would like an SLR so I can do some occasionally more arty shots playing with exposure time, hdr and framing/focus.

I've never in my life used an SLR. I know very little. I would still like the camera to be capable of doing point-and-click fairly fast and then switch to complex when I feel like pissing about. I adore my canon powershot A510 and would continue to use that day to day while the more expensive one would just come out when I actually go somewhere special.

So does anyone have any suggestions for what I should be looking at and where I should be looking?

Many thanks!