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Roxy is trading her 30D for a 5D Mark II. She told me today that the decision wasn’t easy for her and she received opinions about what she should upgrade to. I don’t have friends like her’s that shoot beautiful photos form across the world. But I have received a few opinions from others and have different stances of my own on the topic. For example, I could buy a lens or two and continue to use my D40. But these lenses will not upgrade to a full frame camera if I would make that leap in the future. But these lenses can be used on more cameras given me more options in the future and possibly making their resale easier. Nikon has announced the D300S which means that there may be more used D300’s on the market. That camera would be a good jump for me and wouldn’t cost as much as a full frame body, like the D700.  But the D700, a professional model in my eyes, would be a camera that wouldn’t need to be replaced for a uber-long time.

I can certainly continue shooting without upgrading but as I have mentioned before, my creativity has been limited by my D40, usually when I’m shooting gigs. But I know I feel that way because I’m usually rushed and don’t have the luxury to take my time to compose a portrait slowly. There is also something to be said for the feeling inside me when I was using Jeff’s 5D. I had a passion in my hand that never occurred with other cameras. I thought I had more options and I was more confident about shooting. A feeling isn’t a good reason to spend the money for a better camera but it affected my photography at the time and that is worth noting.

Roxy again mentioned my progress shooting, which I acknowledge, but I have not been shooting as often as I need to be. I have been in Germantown for nearly 2 months and I haven’t walked around with my camera until tonight after the first meeting of a new photo group.

A local I started stalking shortly after moving to Nashville explained his distaste with other photo groups in town. He explained how some groups were merely a social group while another was full of people patting each other on the back. So he put out feelers for a new group, got interest, and scheduled time tonight. He stepped up and spoke about exposure basics like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, etc. There were a few people including myself that didn’t learn much tonight but I’m not sure how many of the others will be back. So its hard to determine the skill level of our group at this point. I know a handful of people bailed so we’ll see how it shapes up next week. After the talk a group of us chatted as we walked around Germantown.

I’ve never shot with a group and I don’t feel comfortable doing so. I am going to give it a chance but I still think its silly to for a group of people to shoot the same things. I imagine people “copying” what others are focusing on. But if the group was to have a specific subject, person, building, etc. then I don’t think I would feel weird about everyone shooting the same objects because that would be everyone task.

I think I have somethings to offer to the group. Using OS X’s Aperture and a little talk on off camera lighting are at the top of my head. Another guy in the group appeared to have more experience with strobes so maybe I could coordinate something with him. I think it would be a lot of fun to give a demonstration with a tethered camera.

I told Roxy that I need to shoot more and she agreed that its the best thing to do. Somehow we touched on shooting strangers. She said that a common beginning assignment in photography classes is shooting 50-100 strangers. I watched a video of a man shooting strangers on a street with one strobe and a white sheet attached to a brick building. I envied his confidence to approach strangers. I realized that Lower Broad has many interesting people that would be willing to have their portrait taken by a stranger so I have made it my goal to head down there in the near future to shoot strangers. I don’t think it would be difficult to approach people especially if I had a backdrop and umbrella so approaching people already knew what I was doing. Talking to strangers with only a camera in my hand most likely wouldn’t give me a positive net result.

Getting through the fall with the D40 is my current goal. Maybe I’ll find a good deal in December or January on a new camera. That should give me enough time to see what else is released by Nikon and decide if I want to take the full frame jump.