RSS FeedAs you may have noticed, I’ve been taking pictures of abandoned and decaying pictures. While I’ve been exploring these buildings for quite some years, I never took photos of my adventures in the past; with exception of this photo. A few months back I suddenly decided to start taking some photos; at first with my cell phone, later with my Canon PowerShot A620.
On its own the PowerShot A620 is a fine camera, and it has served me well for nearly 5 years. But traveling through moist and dark buildings, I started to notice the limitations of a “point and shoot” camera; even though the PowerShot has plenty of options for custom settings. And since I started to like taking pictures more and more, I decided to start looking for an upgrade.
I had already decided that I wanted to get a “Digital single-lens reflex” camera; more widely known as “DSLR”. After reading a lot of reviews and comparing models, I had found my new camera: the Canon EOS 450D.
The EOS 450D has a very nice 12.2 megapixel resolution, which is more than enough to produce high quality images. The lens that was included with the kit is not –the- best lens, but it does its job quite well. I will probably get a better lens at some point in the future, but for now this lens will do just fine. The camera has a 9-point autofocus system that works remarkably fast. Where the PowerShot took about 1 second to focus, the EOS 450D does it in maybe 0.1 second. I’ve got a bunch of memory cards lying about that I can use with the camera. On a 4 GB card I can store 658 photos in JPG format or 177 in RAW format.
I’ve ordered some accessories from DealExtreme, which should arrive in a week or two. I’ve ordered a nice camera bag, some lens cleaning products and some useful thingies like a water level that you can slide onto the camera and a lens-hood.
It might take some fiddling and practicing before I will have mastered this beast, but I’ve read a lot of tutorials, watched a truckload of how-to videos, and I’ve got quite some experience with photography already; so it won’t be long before I’ll be able to produce some kick-ass pictures 
The results will, of course, be available in the photos section of this website. I can’t wait to get outside and play 
It’s Saturday, the weather is shit... you’re bored... what do you do? Hmmz... Aha! Yes, of course! Lets gather up the House Ajira clan(tm), and go visit a Christmas market!
We went to the Christmas Market at CentrO, which is the largest shopping mall in the whole of Europe. It’s located in Oberhausen, Germany.
It was way too crowded, and therefore quite hot and sweaty, but it was fun. Lots of nice foods (bye-bye dieting...), some funny furry purses, smelly wooden balls, and other stuff you probably don’t need, but hey who cares? 
After strawling around, and stuffing our faces, we also visited the local cinema to watch “The day the Earth stood still“. But this being in Germany, of course it meant that the movie was redubbed with German speech, which was a whole new experience on its own. 