I Love Pictures

It's probably pretty obvious that I love to take pictures. I probably (okay, definitely) take way too many pictures on most occasions. I'm addicted. While I might be an alright photographer by regular, non-professional person standards (although I probably should be way better considering I've taken dog pictures at the humane society for the last 9 years), I dream of taking beautiful, amazing photographs. I feel like I have a decent eye for the composition of a picture, but I know absolutely nothing about real photography. Terms like ISO, aperture, aspect ratio, focal length--these all mean virtually nothing to me. I'm ready to move into the world of grown-up cameras so that I can learn how to take better pictures!

So Chad and I are currently researching digital SLR cameras (I just learned that SLR stands for single lens reflex) with the intent of buying my first real camera so that I can graduate into the world of real photography. Right now we're leaning towards the Nikon D40, which has gotten really good reviews for an entry level digital SLR. The only thing that's holding me back is the megapixels-- it's only 6.1. We've read that unless you're needing to make huge prints, 6 megapixels should really be adequate, but I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to go with a lot more megapixels! I just want to make sure I have enough megapixels to take those beautiful pictures I'm dreaming about!

I've learned quite a lot during this research for my dream camera. I didn't realize until today that with most SLRs, you can't use the LCD screen as a viewfinder, which I'm totally used to with my current point and shoot camera! Using the eyepiece will definitely take some practice. It also would appear from my research that most SLRs don't allow you to shoot video. That's kind of a bummer too. Video is just so darn handy sometimes. Maybe I don't really want an SLR so that I can retain these fun features. My brother has a camera that looks like an SLR which has a bunch manual settings, but apparently it isn't actually an SLR. A camera like this would allow me to use the manual focus to be a lot more artistic, but would still allow me the freedom of video! Maybe this is what I should be looking for--I don't know! I need help in deciding what would be the best option for my first "grown up" camera!