daveward

Hi everyone.  I'm a San Francisco Bay Area native.  I am new to photography in this sense:  I just acquired a used but pristine D90...thus I am trying my hardest to move my brain into the digital age.  My prior experience was in the 80's with a Mamiya Sekor 500 tl.  Since then, family and work moved photography waaaaay down the list of priorities.

I describe the D90 as a computer that takes pictures....and like my experiences with computers...they are not intuitive to my way of thinking.  But, as I suggest, I am willing and eager to learn/move the process ahead.

Just so you understand my dilemma:  Up til I acquired the D90 I din't have a computerized camera nor a smart phone.  All my phone does is let me make/take calls.  That's all I need.  Yes...one day  I will get a smart phone so that I can squash my nose in the viewer and be like others...I'm really hoping I can receive all my emails right there on my phone.  (Not really).

I will likely be asking a bunch of newbie questions.  Thanks in Advance for everyone's assistance!

Dave

I am a beginner in this sense:  I just acquired a used but pristine D90...thus I am trying my hardest to move my brain into the digital age.  My prior experience was in the 80's with a Mamiya Sekor 500 tl.  Since then, family and work moved photography waaaaay down the list of priorities.

I describe the D90 as a computer that takes pictures....and like my experiences with computers...they are not intuitive to my way of thinking.  But, as I suggest, I am willing and eager to learn/move the process ahead.

My initial goal is simple:  take a picture to then determine if the shutter count on this camera is as low as I believe.  As is typical with my approach, I now know just enough to be dangerous.  I have learned that the firmware is not the most current and I have a guide that will allow me to do some camera presets...thus it seems that before doing any presets I should load the most current firmware first.  My wife has an SD card reader but it doesn't match the size of my SD card, so then I looked into just simply connecting the camera to my Mac (and perhaps updating the firmware that way).  Then I learned that to do that I needed the NIKON CD to be installed first.  Apparently that CD wasn't among the items I picked up as part of the recent purchase.   I wasn't looking for it (I know I should have) because I believed that using Photoshop or some equivalent would allow me to skip the NIKON CD piece. 

Anyway...not much progress updating the firmware yet.  That's where my first issue is.  I have downloaded the updates from the NIKON site onto my Mac computer but I don't know how to load that information onto the camera.  Should I buy the right card reader?  Buy Photoshop, etc?  What steps would you take given my "ability" to go around in circles when it comes to technology?  Thanks!!!

Dave