A new toy to play with ...

Not actually a Christmas present but a few weeks ago I bought a decent DSLR camera for myself. I don't consider myself a "keen" photographer, but I did want to take better pictures and have more control. I bought a Canon EOS 700D, which seemed to have everything I'd need.

Now, a few weeks later, and having also bought a Dummies guide to the camera (my first such book - it's actually quite good), I'm taking a lot of pictures trying to figure out the various settings. And this is part of the beauty of a digital camera: instant feedback.

I'm old enough to remember when a taking a camera on holiday was very different: the speed of the film rolls, how many to buy, manually winding the film, putting them in to be developed, waiting a week and then discovering that half of then might be spoiled ... very different now!

Now I can take dozens or hundreds of pictures, see instantly what they're like, tune settings, try again. In fact, a camera like this has so many possible settings it can be quite overwhelming.

I've got a lot of playing around to do ... a lot of very bad photographs to take!