You may have noticed we’ve got a new camera — we bought a Nikon D3200 with our own money, and here’s the story behind the upgrade and what it means for our photos and videos.
We purchased the Nikon D3200 on Amazon. It’s essentially the next step up from our old DSLR, the Nikon 3000 series model we bought back in early 2010. After more than two and a half years of heavy use — thousands of photos and countless DIY shots — the old camera finally took a hard hit and we decided to replace it rather than go without a dependable camera for weeks.
The accident happened while I was working on the deck. I was cutting stair stringers, distracted by heat and sawdust, and had set the camera near the end of a 2×10 board. The saw’s vibration slowly nudged the board until the camera slipped off the edge and fell onto concrete. I was looking down at my cut and had no idea until I heard it hit. Not my proudest moment.
This wasn’t the first drop for that camera — over two years of photographing projects, kids, and pets adds up to a lot of scuffs, paint splatters, and dust. Still, this fall did enough damage that autofocus stopped working, and we found ourselves limited to manual focus. That was a serious problem for us because much of our photography is candid and fast-paced: quick shots of Clara or Burger, action during projects, and the everyday moments that don’t wait while you manually focus.
We called our local camera shop and learned they could send it to Nikon for repair. The estimate was reasonable — up to about $150 if it was fixable — but the repair turnaround was long: roughly six to eight weeks. We realized we couldn’t keep the blog running without a reliable camera for two months, and renting a camera for that length of time would cost more than buying a replacement. Buying a cheap point-and-shoot as a temporary fix felt like a waste when we could invest in an upgraded DSLR that would serve our needs now and in the future.
So we treated the situation as a sign to upgrade. We’ll still have the old camera repaired and kept as a backup, but getting a new primary body made sense. We stayed with Nikon and chose another model in the D3000 series so our existing 50mm lens would remain compatible and we wouldn’t need to relearn basic controls. The D3200 cost around $699 on Amazon — more than our previous body but reasonable as a business and family investment.
The D3200 offers several improvements that matter for our work: better low-light performance, more accurate auto white balance, and HD video capability. Those upgrades have already improved our recent videos and made photo editing faster, since we spend less time white balancing and fixing exposure. The new wider-angle video and higher-quality footage are especially noticeable compared with our old Flip cam.
The image above is actually a screenshot from a video, not a still photo, which shows how much better the D3200 handles moving images. I’m excited about these features: they make everyday family moments and project videos look cleaner and more professional without a lot of extra work in post-production.
We’re still learning the nuances of the new camera, but overall we’re very happy with the upgrade. Below are some photos we took right after getting it — none of these were heavily white-balanced or retouched, and they already look cleaner and truer to life than many of our earlier shots.
In short, the upgrade is great for the blog — less time fussing with white balance and low-light settings, better HD video, and improved overall image quality — and it’s also a big win for our family photography and video. After all the times I’ve dropped or dinged gear, replacing the primary camera and keeping the repaired old one as a backup gives us peace of mind: if one fails, we won’t be left without a dependable camera while waiting for repairs.
P.S. On a completely different note, Sherry wants to talk about the finale of Bachelor Pad. If you watched it, what did you think? I would have loved to secretly record Sherry’s reaction.