Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Pretty Pictures

My birthday is coming up and I have decided that I want one of them fancy new-fangled digital cameras. Now I have never owned a camera in my life unless you count those disposable cameras you buy at the grocery store. So I'm going to need some help. I've been doing a little research and I think I know what I like but I need a little explaining on a few things.

1 - What is the least zoom and megapixel capacity I should look for? I'm not getting anything overly high-tech because I think that would be overkill, but I do want to take fairly nice pictures. So I'm thinking about 8 megapixels and 4x zoom - does that sound good?

2 - What's the whole normal, macro and digital macro stuff mean when it's talking about the focusing range & what do I want to look for?

3 - What does the ISO sensitivity mean?

I want something that I can play around with and learn a few things so if you have any advice - let me be your grasshopper and share with me your knowledge of the ways of photography and cameras. As a reward, I'll share lots of purty, purty pictures with you!

A Word about Arnica Montana

It's a homeopathic medicine and is sold in pill form and gels. The pill form is an extremely small dosage and is typically used before surgery and such to reduce the amount of swelling and bruising that occur with the surgery. It can also be used to treat sore muscles, bruises, sprains and imflammation. The gel is also used to treat sprains, bruises etc.

Anyhoo - my neighbor swears by it. She has a sister who is a doula and she recommended that she take it before she delivered her last baby. She says that her recovery and healing time was much faster than the two previous babies. Recently I also saw an article in Runner's World about it. My ankle has been giving me a little grief when I run since I sprained it playing basketball in February and sometimes my arthritic knee aches a little after running. So I thought I would give it a shot. I have been taking it for about a week (I take about half the recommended dosage) and I'm going to say I notice a difference. I have even been running more and I have had only the slightest twinge in my ankle after one of my longer runs.

So I am just going to throw that out there for what it's worth and if you have an ache or sprain or whatever that you are not comfortable taking more ibuprofen - do a little research, see if it might work for you.

Also - speaking of running, writersblock is going to run the Disney marathon as a fund-raiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. So if you can, donate a little money and support her as she runs! She'll blog all about her training and you can envy all the miles she has run. She will also send you a very gracious thank-you note!

Update: So I'm reading over this post and I realize that I sound like a spokesperson for arnica montana. I apologize for the length and excess information, but I have been really liking the results that I have seen so far from using it and I wanted to share. But I hate sharing if I don't pass on correct information and I sometimes go overboard! So that's what you get! :-P