Kathy surprised me with a new present a few days ago. It’s a Nikon D70 digital camera. She’s known for a long time that I wanted one, and with my recent raise at work, she felt that I deserved something special.

This camera is so far beyond anything I ever expected to own that I’m still in shock every time I pick it up. It’s so fast and responsive, and being a true SLR camera, the possibilities are endless. Everything except the zoom feature can be configured to be completely automatic, or you can do everything manually. It’s taken beautiful pictures so far, and I should be able to do even better after I learn a thing or two in the photography classes.

My old camera, the HP photosmart 318, really sucks. It took at least two seconds after pushing the button for it to do anything at all, after which it would flash twice very slowly (three times with red-eye reduction), and finally take the picture. Sometimes nothing would happen at all when you pushed the button, for no visible reason. I have never been very happy with the quality of the pictures I got out of this camera, and because of the rather cumbersome interface, the only time it got real use was on my trip to India … and I REALLY wish that I’d had the Nikon back then!

Many thanks to my loving wife!