Category Archives: Trips

Whee trip

Posted on by

I suppose I should write an update given I’ve been away for a month and I’m about to head home.

I have been in Thailand, with a week-long excursion to Japan. I’ve had multi-day excursions to Chang Mai and Amphawa. I have eaten lots of good, and lots of not-so-good food. I have taken a few thousand photos. I’ve gone shopping nearly every day (although much more rarely for things for myself or for gifts; my parents recently purchased a condo and we needed to outfit it, culminating in a bed and mattress which were delivered yesterday). I’ve spent lots of time with relatives and been missing people back home and had a much-needed break from work. And I’m sad it’s almost over.

Photos will be forthcoming at some point, maybe. Possibly not, given I still haven’t done anything with the photos of my last Thailand trip and Europe excursion. We shall see.

Life and cameras

Posted on by

life has gotten an update bringing it up to today. Yay life.

Last week was a stop in Phoenix to visit my parents. We went to the Pima Air and Space Museum.

Also last week was Kathleen’s wedding. Yay wedding!

Other photos from the trip can be found at photos.

So I safely made it back to Pittsburgh this weekend… and I went from the awesome San Francisco weather to the awesome Phoenix weather to… surprise, surprise, awesome Pittsburgh weather. Actually, it’s been unusually nice for March… more like mid-April weather than anything.
As such, I have been taking extended breaks in the afternoon from work to go enjoy the weather and photograph.




Also shot some photos of 8 today.


Been pondering camera lenses (and future body purchases) lately.
At this point, I have two paths I can go down: I can invest in AF-S DX lenses that will work with the more intro-level Nikon DSLRs, and replace my D90 with a lower-level body (like the D3100 or D5100) when it dies… or I can invest in more full-frame lenses (like all of my current lenses except for one) and get a full-frame body (like the D800) when it dies.
The big difference here would be between the 18-200mm DX lens and the 28-300mm FX lens. Each will be between $700 and $900, so both is not a reasonable option. (Not to mention they cover most of the same range anyway, so it’d be dumb to get both.)

I’m really not sure that a more expensive, more professional body is worthwhile. I mean, yes, I use my camera way more than most people. But I don’t shoot studio shots, or sports, or things that would require me to have instant access to a wide range of features that the more professional bodies offer. (I don’t even ever use most of the features, like white balance settings or bracketing or viewfinder grid lines or AF modes.) As such, the only benefit to the D800 would be the full-frame sensor, but that alone is not worth the $2500 difference in cost between bodies.

Which leaves me feeling like I should aim towards a lower-level body. These have the benefit of being cheaper ($500 or so) and ligher (which is important given how much I carry my camera around). I can’t think of one feature the lower-level bodies lack that I would miss. (Well, maybe support for the infrared remote. But that is so minor and I’ve used my remote exactly once since I got it.)
So the only downside here would be that none of my current lenses will autofocus with the bodies, meaning I would have to invest in a new series of lenses. If I do this, I’ll probably invest in DX lenses (which are not full-frame), which means that a future transition to a full-frame camera would be much more difficult than it is now. But this still seems like the right thing to do.

Which means my next purchase will likely be the 35mm f/1.8 DX lens. At some point, I should probably also switch out my 50mm f/1.8 with the AF-S version and sell my 70-300mm.

Yay cameras.

San Francisco

Posted on by

I am in San Francisco through Friday. Yay San Francisco.
Photos!


Plane. Yay plane.

Southwest in Vegas has these nice ceiling-mounted boarding signs instead of the poles they have at other airports. I think these are nicer.

There’s a tech company ad on the BART based on insanity wolf. This is rather… bizarre.

Sunday dinner, as always, was all-you-can-eat pizza at Local. This time I went with Ian, Trisha, Ben, and Mark.

Afterward, we went to Jeremy’s for games.

Monday dinner was Stone with teisenbe and Kempy.

Dinner tonight was Xanh in Mountain View with jgrafton, Jack, Krieger, Ben, dfontain, Gopi, Raphael, and Erik.

Vacation

Posted on by

So I took the week off for a (much needed) vacation to visit Tim in Connecticut.

The Amtrak trip over was really, really nice. Totally stress-free compared to airports. The views were amazing (although maybe I’m just jaded about airborne pictures since I fly so much), the seats had a ton of legroom (I could stretch out my legs horizontally!), there were power outlets, and I could use any electronic device (and my phone) at any time.

The only slightly stressful part was Penn Station in NYC, which is one of the busiest places I’ve ever been, but even that initial feeling of being overwhelmed turned into a sense of adventurism (that’s totally a word) once I left the arrivals floor and got to the main floor.

Time at Tim’s has been filled with lots of games and awesome. Ian is here now, and Keith will be joining us later this week.

Last night we went to Sushi Palace, an all-you-can-eat place that isn’t a traditional buffet… you put down orders for plates of food or sushi on slips of paper, and they bring them out to you, freshly made. I ate a ton of sushi (and a ton of eel), but it was so good.

Yay vacation.