I worked from home today so that I could greet the UPS man who was bringing my new camera, the Canon 7D. He arrived in the afternoon and after letting the battery charge up, I wanted to take some trial pictures to make sure the camera was working. There wasn’t much light from outside and I didn’t want to mess with external flash yet, so I used our normal room lighting. Of course I chose my favorite target in this lighting, our cat Sam, who was sleeping on top of the cat tree. His orange fur is a good match to the warm color of the overhead lamp, which lets me leave the color balance rather warm.

I started reading the manual a bit but some of the new features jumped out at me without needing to turn a page. One is the nice big LCD on the back, my previous cameras had a 1.8″ screen with 118,000 points and the new one has a 3.0″ screen with 920,000 points. Very noticeable difference, even at a quick glance, and one of the smaller touches I’m looking forward to enjoying down the road.

One drawback to using such a new camera is that the converter that I typically use (Adobe Camera Raw) doesn’t support it yet, and I’ve never been too good at using the one Canon supplies, so I played around with a new one tonight, Raw Photo Processor. I can’t say I’m comfortable with it but a passable first attempt at my sleepy kitten.

I took time tonight to do some writing, even with a siren tempting me across the room, and while I’m not caught up yet in NaNoWriMo, at least I didn’t lose any more ground.