So, I'm currently typing this at my grandparent's house, and I was - just ten minutes ago - given the opportunity to toy around with my grandfather's new Sony AX300 SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera. I'm still in awe at how amazing of a camera it is.

I've heard a lot of things about how most SLR cameras are insanely challenging to use. Thousands of features you'll never use nor understand, a twenty-million-page instruction booklet that makes even less sense than the camera itself, and how they're a total bitch to focus with. I found none of those things with this camera. I'm familiar with how Sony's cameras are built, so it was kind of a "home-field advantage" for myself, but I was still shocked at how easy it was to use.

The biggest difference between the AX300 and my CyberShot is the simplicity of manual focus. On MY camera, manual focus is completely impossible, and you almost always have to rely on the auto focus to get it right. With the AX300, I actually prefer the manual focus. It allows you to get the image focused on just the right part. Say you're taking a picture of a bunch of flowers, and instead of focusing on the flower closest to you, you want the farthest back. On a manual focus point-and-shoot camera, you could never, ever do that. On the AX300, it was easy as pie.

I was also appalled by the difference of the image quality between my semi-professional camera, and this professional model. The camera picks up every little detail you can get in one image, and it creates far better results.

Hopefully within the next year or so, I'll be able to get a job and save of the money to buy an SLR beast like this. I've actually heard you can get pretty good ones for only three or four hundred dollars, so it's definitely within the budget of a minimum-wage High School student... sorta-kinda-not-really. No, it really isn't. I'll try anyways.

You'll see some of the pictures I took in my grandparent's garden later tonight once I get back to a computer with proper image-editing software so I can make the pictures smaller.