New Camera; Also Reviewing Purchases

I finally have a dSLR. No longer do I have to hold my camera up in front of me in that quite silly-looking way; once again I can look through a viewfinder. Hurrah!

I say “once again” because I used to have — well, still do have, but almost never use — a film SLR, namely an [Olympus OM-1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_OM-1).

With the new one I’ve gone over to Canon, though. It’s an [EOS 600D](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EOS_600D); which rather oddly is known in America as the Rebel T3i and in Japan as the Kiss X5.

Here’s a picture of Clapton Pond to show you what it can do. Click through for a better view on Flickr.

I bought it online for full £200 less than I’d’ve had to pay at [Jessops](http://www.jessops.com); and by going to a site called [DigitalRev](http://www.digitalrev.com/) I saved about £100 over Amazon’s prices. DigitalRev’s service was incredibly good: my camera arrived in London from Hong Kong in two days. It took a few more days for DHL to get it to me, but that’s not DigitalRev’s fault. Really astonishingly fast service, and for the cheapest price I could find anywhere.

The only slightly annoying thing is that I clicked a link in their email asking for comments (essentially to say the above); it took me to a site called [Reseller Ratings](http://www.resellerratings.com/), where I filled in a few boxes, and then hit “Submit”… whereupon it wanted me to create a profile before I could submit the review. And I just couldn’t face it. I’ll almost certainly never go to that site again, so even though it’s only a name and email (and password) I just though, “No. I’d rather put a good review up on my own site.”

So think on that, people running review sites.