Happy Gondorian New Year & SLR Recommendations Please?

So, for those Tolkien Geeks among my friends, "Happy Gondorian New Year". On this day, Ages ago, the One Ring of Sauron was cast into the flames of Mount Doom and his reign of evil came to an end. (I'll conveniently ignore the fact that his essence fractured and spread in all directions across the earth, just look at Paris and Brussels, not to mention North Korea.) So even though his evil still exists, we'll celebrate the New Year anyway because we can all use a celebration.

Raise a glass in celebration. On this day the One Ring of
Sauron was cast into the flames of Mount Doom and evil
was once again vanquished from Middle Earth. 

Now that the glasses of champagne have been raised and the sparkler has been lighted, I am looking for recommendations. I know a number of my readers play with photography, and I'm in the market for a digital SLR camera. I have a lot of art at the store that I need to photograph before I can offer it up for sale on Ebay or directly to other dealers, I also have much smaller items that will need photographing. The punch in the knee is that the camera needs to be affordable and not have a learning curve that will take forever to master.

I know there are more than just these three brands, and I know there
are several models available for each brand, it's rather overwhelming. 

Basically, I'm usually a point-and-shoot gal and haven't used an SLR since my Minolta of years ago. I loved that camera, but was delighted to go for smaller and lighter as well as point-and-shoot. I use my phone for photos more often than I would like to admit. I'm still not 100% sure that a digital SLR will be the answer for me because I'm very concerned about the learning curve. But I have a lot of Native American art in the shop that I need to sell. That means photographs upon photographs are necessary and the lighting isn't always going to be ideal, so having the ability to adjust f-stops, etc., might be quite important.

I've got an excellent tripod and good lights, I'll
probably need to purchase a new backsplash
drape (and those are NOT cheap). I don't have a lot
of open space for set-up, and it's going to be
a pain for the larger works. But it has to
get done. 

If you currently use a Digital SLR, would you mind sharing what you do and don't like about your camera? Would you buy it again? Or would you switch to a different brand/model and why? I know it's Good Friday and you have hundreds of things to do before Easter, but I'd really appreciate your input and opinions.

Happy Gondorian New Year to all. 

Have a wonderful Friday and if you're signing off for the holiday weekend, a great Easter. I'll be back here tomorrow for my Saturday post. Happy New Year, Gondor!

Sharing Beauty

Saturday morning was magic. I awakened to a world that had been touched by a magic wand and hoarfrost covered every surface. After I got to the shop, I put on my coat, put my keys in my pocket, and grabbed my camera. I'm sharing the photos below.

I had a marvelous Sunday honoring the God of Cholesteral while eating too many things that were bad for me and watching the Superbowl. The game was excellent, the commercials were fun, I got quite a bit done on my latest illustration efforts, and ate my dip (excellent) pizza rolls (not so good - we'll throw away the rest of them) and stuffed cupcakes (marvelous). We didn't have any room or desire to eat the Bar-B-Que ribs or shrimp, so those remain for the week ahead. Not too bad :-) We also spent the morning at Barnes & Noble getting a few book and mags, and had breakfast out as well. All in all, Sunday was a lovely day.

White Rabbits

In "Alice in Wonderland" the character of the White Rabbit is constantly checking his pocket watch and running off saying that he's late. How well I understand him. How I can possibly be late when I'm up at 3:30 am is a mystery to me. But I have come to the conclusion that I will have to switch some tasks around because things are falling behind. Today I didn't even get to my blog until almost noon - good thing Wednesday is my day off or my blog would have been inactive until after I returned from work and had dinner. But I think I will have to split some tasks up between my morning and my evening to be able to get things done in a timely fashion and get the "back burner" items back to the front of the stove.

My Emails and chat groups generally take me three hours to run through. But, today I have five "new chapter alerts" from authors that I follow (always a very positive thing that I really look forward to - but a time eater). I also had a couple of intensive Emails - things that I couldn't just read and then go on to the next, but things that I actually had to put thought into a reply for. It's good for me, and I love communicating with my friends, etc., but a comprehensive answer can put me back 20-30 minutes. So...by the time 7am came around, the time when I should be wrapping things up and leaving for work, I still hadn't plugged into my main business Emails or any of my secondary chat boards. I have to get my time under control before I leave for Milwaukee at the end of the month. I'll be laptop dependent then and will have at least two class days from hell with no time at all, so I know I'll miss some things then. I must be caught up before I leave so that I won't have a full month or more to catch up on.

On the plus side, however, I did treat myself to a new, smaller, more powerful digital camera for my upcoming birthday gift to myself. I had a budget of less than $200 and found a Samsung with a great macro (very important) that came in at the price. I wanted it in red, but they would have had to order that. So I got black. I can live with that :-)