A while ago I was making some back-ups and found pictures I took many years ago. I also found the first pictures I took manually. In that time I used an Olympus SP-500 UZ. It was my second digital camera and the first one that was not fully automatic. I could change the settings myself. With this camera I learned the basic principles of photography.
It was a 6-megapixel camera and that was pretty cool at that time. To compare it with today's standards, a Samsung S7 has a 12-megapixel camera build inside. The camera on the other side (the selfie camera) has a 5 megapixel camera.
Today I take all my pictures in RAW format, so all the information about my pictures is stored in the file. Even after I shoot a picture, I can change certain settings (like for example the white balance) with programs like Photoshop and Lightroom.
My Olympus had also the option to shoot in RAW format, but at that time I did not understand the advantages of that. So I shot all my pictures in JPEG.
I photographed this dandelion in 2004. Because I took it in JPEG format, I don't have any information about the picture, only the date and the time. In that time I was studying to be a teacher. I lived in a big house near the beach in Noordwijk. It was the time of my life. A great place to learn photography.
