The shipping company made a great mistake and sent all my cargo to Vietnam instead of USA. By another mistake they put my camera in that cargo. Now, after living 3 months in the US, missed a lot of good photo opportunities because the camera would "arrive soon" and in general getting grumpy because my stuff is missing - I decided I did not want to wait any longer, bought myself a new camera.

I am now the slightly confused owner of a Nikon D80! It is my second SLR camera, I used to have a Minolta (film not digital) but it had been dented and light from a crack somewhere in the camera house made the pictures on the film red and distorted. (I am not blaming Minolta for this, one of the things this old camera actually survived was a 200 meter fall, inside my backpack, because the backpack fell off a ledge while we were having a break).

Then after some time I bought a compact digital camera, an Olympus mju 500. This is the one that is spending summer on the pacific inside some cargo ship. I took some good pictures with it, and compact has its advantages such as you can always take it with you because it is ... compact! However, I often was disappointed due to the pictures not being as sharp as I wanted them to be.

I am not 100% sure about what caused this, it could be me (my hands shake a litte, but shake less when I hold a heavier camera such as an SLR compared to a compact. I also shoot better with a rifle than a pistol.....) It could also be the optics, my compact is water and shock resistant so I can always take it with me - but it may be that Olympus cut the cost on the lenses.

Anyway, my favourite setting for pictures is low light conditions and that is difficult with any camera, and it often requires a little planning to get the pictures right. With my shaky hands, I need support for the camera, and I figured out that this was actually more fun with a proper SLR camera and a camera mount. This will be a lot more fun down by the sea

Look forward for my learning curve to be published here...goddam, it's a lot of buttons and such!