A lightning struck tree - 3/16/14

But first, here’s more dog pictures.

1/60 - F5.6 - ISO 400 - Some kind of auto mode I’m sure

1/60 - F4.5 - ISO 400

Because Sandie was a good girl.

Anyway, about a month after the last image I woke up and went downstairs to find a lot of leaves out the window where there usually was not. Turns out there was a lightning strike in the night that split a tree.

1/40 - F3.5 - ISO 160

Of course I did grab my new DSLR and go out to take pictures. We were able to see the entry point higher up the tree, and the exit where the tree exploded into two pieces and cracked.

1/30 - F3.5 - ISO 320

1/40 - F3.5 - ISO 320

1/80 - F5 - ISO 2000

1/60 - F4.5 - ISO 1600

Thankfully no one was hurt and the only damage was to the tree and the fence it landed on. I didn’t hear any of this, I just know the tree was in one piece when I went to bed. In more pieces when I woke up. Fascinating to look back on, knowing what I know now I would have taken more pictures. Different angles, even closer. Maybe a macro lens if I had owned one. But that’s hindsight. Grateful for the safe opportunity that I had.

The First Camera... I ever purchased with my own money. 2/9/14

A bit of a jump in the timeline here. From 2008-2014.

In 2014 I was 23 years old and well into adulthood. Gone were the binge drinking parties, working a minimum wage ($7.25) job and trying to sell enough discount cards to remain on the schedule. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford rent. But by 2014 I was working at a full time job paying 12 bucks an hour. Still not a great job but it was how I was able to afford this…

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Do a google search for “Canon Rebel T3i”

Not gonna risk a copyright claim for using someone else’s photo

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The Canon Rebel T3i with a kit 18-55mm lens. Used of course, picked it up for $484.94 back on February 9th 2014. Even came with a nice bag that I still use to this day.

Now at the time all I wanted it for was to make Youtube videos with my buddy, we had several live action ideas and of course made let’s plays. Those still crack me up.

So my only requirements for the camera was could it record in HD. I did play around with it to test the still image capability, but evidently I didn’t save any of those images. I do specifically remember borrowing a lens from my dad. I knew he had a Canon film camera, luckily the lenses were EF mount. Not that I knew anything about that at the time, I just stuck it on and it worked. I believe it was a Tamron telephoto of some kind. I remember borrowing that from him for a good while.

But for the purpose of recording videos, I did wind up taking a test shot while trying to learn the camera. So officially the first image I ever took with a DSLR is the following.

1/30 - F4 - ISO 800 - 2/14/2014

A couch with a sheet thrown over it, with a rainbow wallpaper background. Because that’s what that bedroom had for wallpaper. And it was a rather clean background for us to shoot the video. The video series was essentially a debate, we would roll random super powers from the wiki. And argue about who would win in a fight. And then I would edit it together and add “animations” that were MS paint style. But I had moved to using photoshop at that time, as having layers was amazing.

So that’s the story behind the very first image I took with a DSLR. Definitely brings back some memories.

First camera

Before I can even talk about the first camera I ever purchased, we should go back briefly to the first camera I ever owned. No idea when I received this camera, probably in my teenage years for either a birthday or Christmas. But I have dug through my archives to locate the absolute oldest photo I can find.

1/250 - F 5.6 - ISO 80
Although this was most definitely shot in some kind of auto mode, don’t even think this camera would have had a manual.

That would be me at age 17 cracking a bullwhip in a local park. Good times.

But as far as the camera goes, I think I had it for a while at this point. It did not get much use sadly, but at the time I was enjoying video games and studying to “graduate” my homeschooling. The camera in question, thanks to EXIF data, was a Panasonic Lumix DMC-L73. Does that mean anything to me, no not really. But I recognized it when I googled for an image.

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You can search for one too, not gonna host someone else’s picture here and take a risk of copyright claim.

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Good ol’ point and shoot. I’m not even sure if I still have this somewhere. If so it’s in a box probably in a shed in North Carolina.

So that’s the first camera I ever owned with the oldest picture I have from it. I assume there were others that have been lost to time and hard drives long gone. Carrying over data would have required things like a flash drive. Certainly didn’t have any external storage drives. I think a lot of stuff would have been carried over from my phones, I do have quite a few pictures from my first phone with a camera. A blackberry, followed by another blackberry. But I don’t quite few them the same way as I would a traditional camera. So we’ll be skipping over those to get to something more important next time. The first camera I ever purchased with my own money.

To leave off, here’s another image I took with the Panasonic, although about 5 months later. Our dog Sandie.

1/30 - F2.8 - ISO 100