You're my treasured work of art

[austin_dern]

So, done with multi-day reports on things and I can get back to the ordinary stuff of everyday life. Here's something kind of a footnote to the Celebration of Imminent Babyness and visiting my brother and his girlfriend up in Boston: she asked if I could send some of the pictures of the day. In her recollection all the events of it were one fast-paced blur. I certainly understand that. Considering the due date (next Monday, though there are signs the child may be early) she's going to have a month that's a fast-paced blur. I poked around in iPhoto and looked at what I had photographed.

The pictures were horrible. I don't mean the compositions and subjects and such were; I'm a competent photographer and have a fair idea what to be pointing at when I click. It's the camera that failed me. The light is generally muddy with a few that are too bright, the shutter speed was off as there's blurs in pictures that shouldn't be, and a distressing number (corresponding to just after I changed the batteries) have weird pixellation artifacts, like they were on ancient film stock which had time to decay.

I was using my mother's camera. Obviously with somewhere around 27,000 pictures on my own 2003-dated camera I've got very, very good at it and its quirks and I just fumbled using a foreign model, right? Except my mother's camera was, pretty much, just the successor model to my 2003-dated digital camera. She looked on purpose for one as much like mine but better when she got it a couple years ago. If I can't transfer my skill on one camera to the version as near like it as possible --- and new cameras are even less like it, with menus that just irritate me in the Best Buy --- what's the fate of my picture-taking when I finally do need to replace this one?

Trivia: B F Skinner's early 1940s research in using pigeons to guide missiles was supported by the General Mills Company. (Vice President of Research Arthur Hyde took the project as a public service.) Source: Superdove: How The Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And The World, Courtney Humphries. And why does every piece of trivia about B F Skinner sound like an urban legend about B F Skinner?

Currently Reading: War Of Omission, Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. Here's one for james_nicoll's Everything Is Worse With Libertarians file. Using a mysterious device that blips (or, actually, 'tisses', in this case) stuff out of living memory, freedom fighters battling the oppressive Government blip out the federal, state, and local governments. After millions of people are killed in petty warlord fighting and the collapse of the economy going into winter, and the Soviet Union launches an invasion to restore order they do admit that maybe there were some good things about the old order after all, even if the big mean poopyheads of government cruelly and oppressively didn't let people run deceptive advertisements on TV and made folks get their homes inspected for building violations. (I don't assert any side of this debate to be O'Donnell's viewpoint based solely on the text. Just that the characters were a bunch of fathead idiots who had no business launching the Revolution.)

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'd suggest looking at a low-end DSLR + kit lens, like the D3100, D5100, or a used D90 (a mid-range, but now replaced by the D7000; still well-regarded, nonetheless). Then, you gain the rather significant benefits of a much larger sensor (a typical compact's is around 6x4mm; a "crop" sensor DSLR's is around 24x16mm) - where every pixel really counts, rather than being eaten up in noise reduction, detail in shadows actually remains, and you can keep shooting in much worse light. Of course, it's more expensive, and larger - but for moments worth capturing, that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. It's not a subtle difference. ^_^

And then, you can control the camera as completely as you'd like - an action scene? No problem - just specify a sensible shutter speed, and off you go, optionally choosing a particular aperture for a desired depth of field. (Of course, DSLRs can also run on automatic, anything from "scene modes" through to "programmed auto", or being able to set the speed and let the camera take care of the rest, down to fully manual. Each method has its uses)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Startlingly, perhaps, you are looking at about the same cameras which I've been considering, in those moments when I allow myself to linger in the camera aisle at Best Buy and before a sales clerk scares me off by asking how to help me. I do like a lot about them.

It's a little to my frustration that recently the things I've wanted to photograph have been amusement park trips and it'd be much more convenient there to have a camera that folds down into a tiny, flat, pocket-fitting pack. I can squeeze mine into the leg pockets of my cargo shorts, but that's an imperfect solution just from how bulky it leaves my pant leg.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

My camera may be smaller than yours but it's not that small. I sacrifice not-looking-like-a-dork and wear it in a case with a belt loop. If you have it actually attached your belt they usually won't make you take it off.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It certainly seems much smaller, anyway. Maybe it just packs away better. I'm still making do with the free ``camera case'' it came with that's pretty much a camera-bulged piece of fabric that fits snugly but not much else around the camera.