I'm going back
I found out today I'll be returning to India later this month, arriving at midnight on Sunday the 29th for a two week stay. I'm looking forward to it, not taking into account the brutal travel and various potential ailments, of course.
I was disappointed with my camera on the last trip and got a bug in me when I returned to get something new. I used to use film SLR's but got out of that habit in the last ten years. I wanted something closer to that experience than my Olympus Stylus 410 gave me. Had a Nikon D40 been available at the time I might have bought it but I choked on the money and settled for a Canon S3IS.
The S3 is a really sweet camera. It has a phenomal zoom lens and image stabilizaiton that enables you to use it. It takes great 640x480 movies with sound. It has many other features that other compact digital camera's have too, but none of those have that zoom and the movies.
But. It's not a digital SLR. And as much as I've enjoyed using the S3 I kept coming back to what it wasn't. So 2 weeks ago I started shopping for a dSLR and astonished even myself by what I chose. A Nikon D200 w/ an 18-200mm zoom. Here's what it looks like with that lens. I added an SB-400 flash and I still need to get a bag to carry it. I must be losing my mind.
So there you have it. I'll be visiting Hyderabad during the hot season with scant excuse for not taking some good pictures. Except for those I'll come up with between now and then.
Housekeeping note: I changed the appearance of the blog, not because I like this format so much as because I was tired of the old one. And I created two categories on the right side of the page, one that collects the posts for the first India trip and another for the next.