Hello from a complete newbie :)

[gtcas1976]

Hi,

I'm a complete newbie at photography, well at least at "proper" photography.

I'm 37, married and have a 3-year old daughter who is my life.

A few years back, before our daughter even came along, my hubby had decided to get into photography and bought himself an SLR and a great amount of photography gear to go with it.
He played with it all for a whole 2 years, and then my daughter came along and things got busy and he kind of lost the passion for it.

In a few months time my whole family and I are going to relocate out of the city of Bristol for a more rural and quiet life. And as such i've decided I am going to need a new hobby and as my husband's fancy camera is still being left unused, I've decided to give it a new lease of life and take to it myself.

I also run 2 small businesses from home, the first one as a French teacher for very young children (yes, I'm French but came over to the UK 14 years ago) and also as a Sweet Creations artist.. I make sweet trees and sweet cakes and other sweet things.

I'd love to learn about photography in general. I love nature and I would like to show it through photography, but I would also love to learn how to take arty shots of my sweet creations.

I've currently got my own camera a Sony Exmor R 18.2 Mega Pixels DSC-HX20V which I use as just a point & shoot. My husband's camera, which I'm now going to use for my photography project is an SLR Canon 350D. The hubster reckons my Sony has a much better resolution than his but I'm keen to learn how to use an SLR.

I don't really know where to start. The hubster has put it on charge tonight, ready for me to start using tomorrow. I don't even know what I'm going to start shooting... I guess I'm just going to have a play around with it.

So anyway, I'm going to have plenty of questions I imagine. Please be patient with me and I hope to become part of this community for a long while.

 

[-Paul-]

Hi Sandrine and welcome to TP.
Dont be to worried about having a go with your husbands camera your not going to break it (I hope) at least not on purpose. You say your husband 'played around with it for 2 years' then I assume he will give you some pointers? But if I was you I would just put it on 'auto' to start off with then, lets say, swap lens around while taking pictures of anything from the same distance so you get some sort of an idea what they do. Then when your happy change one setting at a time and observe the results. Everyone on here had to start where you are now! Just enjoy yourself, it can a great hobby!