Ruby + Swallow: Nikon Love

You have probably noticed that in many a blog post, we refer back to our ~~really crap~~ old cameras, apologising immensely for the pictures which we have taken. Or maybe you haven't. As designers, we know how to work a little Photoshop and can sometimes save an extremely bad picture into being workable on our blog. You see, Filipa has an old digital camera, the kind that still takes AA batteries - you know those?! - and with very low megapixel quality. I have a bright pink Sony point-and-shoot that I got for my 21st birthday, that was once a really great touch-screen camera. But with far too much use over the years (read: being dropped too many times, spilling drinks on it and being shoved into cars and bags), it has packed up completely. Many memories from holidays or occasions have been ruined due to my blurry images! We hate that neither of us has had a good enough camera to use for blog posts, and with all that in mind, Fil and I decided it was just the right time to purchase our own new cameras.

So we spoilt ourselves this month. Nikon SA had an epic sale on the 1 June, and for fear of missing out on this crazy sale, it had us scrolling through all the Nikon products on sale and simultaneously through their price list, to see what we wanted and could afford. Just the mention of the word "sale" is enough to draw the two of us ~~shopping-addicts~~ in. And after lots of research, mostly chatting to people who have cameras themselves, we both decided on buying the Nikon Coolpix P7000. We each got our own camera at a ridiculous sale price! Isn't she a beauty?

Neither Fil nor myself can claim to be photographers. We did a two-week Photography 101 course in our fourth year at Rhodes, where we learnt a thing or two about a camera's shutter speed, aperture and ISO, but because we haven't owned our own fancy camera's until now, its been hard to further that knowledge. We chose the P7000 because it is compact like a point-and-shoot, and yet has all the features of a DSLR. It is the perfect travelling companion and it is ideal for amateurs like us!

The Nikon Coolpix P7000's average customer rating is 4.1 out of 5 - which seems pretty good to us! It has a 1.7inch CCD sensor and is 10.1 megapixels. It has a high ISO up to 6400 which means it can photograph fast-moving subjects in low light and produce great photographs. The electronic virtual horizon display enables the precise levelling of the camera in a landscape, and there is an in-camera red-eye fix function. The large LCD on the camera has a wide viewing angle, and the anti-glare coating makes it easy to view photos while shooting. The P7000 has HD video recording which can be played on a HD-TV. A fun function is that the camera has a Blink Warning, alerting you if a subject in your portrait has blinked!!

An awesome feature of the Nikon Coolpix P7000 is that you can attach a flash onto the camera if you desire, which is great!

For most types of blogs, photography is a big deal. Ruby & the Swallow takes pride in showing our readers beautiful imagery, and we try where best we can to show you gorgeous pictures for whatever topic we are featuring. We know that on the blogs that we enjoy, it is photography that attracts us most. And now that goes the same for our own photographs! While we still have so much to learn about photography, we can't wait to start using our new cameras for blog features. And we can't wait to show you either!

I took my Nikon camera on its first outing yesterday, on an early morning walk on the Umhlanga promenade. And this is one of the pretty pictures it produced of the Durban sunrise... Happy Monday Ruby friends, hope you have an amazing week!

Picture credits: 1 // 2 // 3