Hello from NZ!

Hey everyone, I'm 15 years old and have lived in Auckland, New Zealand for the last 3 years. I was born in Auckland but when I was 5, I moved to Tanzania for 7 years, where I had the most awesome time!! Growing up over there I couldn't help but learn to love animals, especially birds. It was however only in my last year there when I got into photography, and by the time I had saved up for my first camera (a digital compact olympus with 18x zoom) I had only a few months left to snap away. Since returning to NZ I have been back twice and got some ok photos, as well as taking heaps more in auckland. However I soon realised that to have any hope of taking some great photos I needed to get a dslr. After MUCH researching I finally purchased a relatively new canon 40D in october 2009. Paired with some pretty average ef lenses (28-80mm, 75-300mm) which belonged to my parents i have since enjoyed making the most of my gear. I am now saving up for either a 300mm f4 is, or more likely a 400 f5.6l for bird (and occasionally whatever else is thrown at me) photography.
Cheers!
Chris :bg3:

From one Christopher to another, Welcome to BPN! :S3: This is a great place to learn. I'm curious, what model was your first camera?

Hi other Christopher :S3: it was an olympus SP550UZ, and my parents owned an eos 300 film camera, which is where the lenses came from...

Cool! That's the same camera I use, the Olympus SP-550 UZ. :S3: I like it a lot, but, yeah, it's not really ideal for bird photography.

I also loved it and took some good photos :c3:, but seeing as it was mostly used for bird photography i thought it was better to get an slr...

Welcome to BPN Christopher! Hope you like it here. I wish I had that type of photography equipment when I was your age!!