My adventure into the world of digital SLR photography officially kicked off around four weeks ago when I placed an order for a Nikon D300 digital SLR camera with a Nikkor 18-200mm DX VR lens; of which came from a couple of months of pondering and researching cameras, such as: a Canon 450D, 40D and 50D cameras and Nikon D90 and D300.

Ever since getting the camera, I have been learning as much as I can about photography in general and taking many, many pictures. Many didn't turn out too well, many were blurred due to not keeping the camera still enough (I don't have a tripod or monopod for it yet, that will be my next investment), and there were the random gems.

Then... there are those photos that were born out of pure curiosity and experimentation. I have posted some of those photos on Picasa. More successful (and several failed) experiments will be uploaded over time. I will also be posting additional albums as they seem fit.

Speaking of Picasa, while I use Picasa 3.0 to caption and sync photos with my web albums, I use the included Nikon ViewNX to tweak and export the photos as JPEG or TIFF files. It is nice that Picasa 3.0 supports the Nikon NEF format (which is the only format that I currently shoot, uncompressed at 12-bit), but it just does not provide the same level as photo tweaking compared to ViewNX.

As with any hobby in photography, a camera body and one lens is not enough. Over time, I plan on adding new lenses to my collection. I have posted the lenses that I am considering on one of my Amazon wish lists.