My New Toy

I thought about writing a post highlighting our Christmas activities, but realized it would be incomplete if I did it now because we have one last party to attend.  For several years now it's been our tradition to celebrate Christmas with Ken's family on New Year's Day.  So, the comprehensive Christmas post will have to wait another few days.

Instead, I thought I'd share some Nikon D5100 photos and, if Blogger will let me, maybe one of the first videos I shot with it.  We'll see.  Blogger doesn't always like me. 

The camera has a bunch of "Effect" settings.  These are too fun.  I really like the "selective color" mode.  I can tell the camera to capture up to three separate colors.  In the first picture, I selected green only.  While the tree is quite obvious, you can also see the frames on the wall have green mats as well.  

The red in the wreath is pretty.  I really liked this one.  

Luckily, my wonderful hubby had brought home some a Christmas bouquet, which was perfect for experimenting with this selective color feature.  I move from one color to two in the series.  Adding a third would have, in my opinion, created a full-color picture with no black & white features at all.  

Another feature I think is kind of cool is the "Color Sketch" effect.  This is the only sample I have so far.  This calls for more experimentation!

I don't have examples of all the in-camera effects I can select from, but if you're curious to know what else the camera can do, here's a link to Nikon's product page. 

Also, as promised, here's a short video I recorded. 

I'm very happy with the video quality, although I do wonder if there's a way to get the sound of the auto focus in the lens to not show up in the recording.  I somehow doubt it. 

To say the least, I am very, VERY happy with my new toy.  Now if I can just figure out how to work all the bells and whistles on the thing!