My first serious camera. I’d had other point and shoot film and digital cameras before, but none of them were what I’d call particularly good. I was given this one about fifteen years ago from my mother in law, after she realised that it was way too much camera for her. This thing has been dropped, knocked over, had things spilled on it, there’s a small insect in the viewfinder that I just ignore, and I am currently battling a tiny hair on the sensor that I cannot for the life of me seem to remove. Every time I clean it, the hair just finds somewhere else to sit so it can annoy me. This is not my favourite camera. I can’t even particularly say that I love it. But it is my daily use camera, and I have no intention of replacing it. I’d like something that doesn’t weigh as much as a house, and which takes photos in 4k, but whatever. This one was free.
It’s got the 18-55mm lens it came with, which is a pretty good lens on its own. This is the lens I usually take with me when I’m walking around town, and crawling around in alleys looking for things to photograph. Along with it, I was also given a Quantaray 70-300mm lens. It’s… decent. It was better before I dropped it down two flights of stairs. How it survived that, I do not know.
It’s a bit fiddly to use now. Nothing vital broke, but some mechanism inside fell out of alignment, so it requires some strategic flipping between automatic and manual function at a certain point when zooming in or out, or focusing. I only take this out when I’m birdwatching or similar. Otherwise, it’s too much of a pain in the balls to use.
I wish I could find a lens hood for the 18-55mm that was as good as this one though. I have two hoods for that lens, and they’re both awful. So I never use them, which is why photos taken with that lens are prone to flare. I have a CPL on both lenses, and on the 70-300, the hood is easily reversible. Even if I don’t take the hood off, I can easily reach inside and adjust the CPL if I need. Both the hoods I have for the smaller lens are too damn small, and interfere with the filter. Neither are reversible (despite one of them having the selling point that it would be), both are too tight to reach inside, and one of them can’t even be used with a filter at all because it screws into the inside threads of the lens. I’ve given up on hoods for the smaller lens, honestly. It can just have lens flares.