Category Archives: Photo Stuff

Photo Stats Time

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It’s the end of a four-month period and we recently passed 500,000 photos, so the photo journal and stats pages have been updated and… it’s time for new stats!

The cameras table also has an update, because since the last stats update, I’ve gotten two new cameras! I got a moto g pure back in 2022 and work also upgraded my iPhone to an iPhone 14.

Intel Pocket PC camera October 6, 2000 – September 18, 2003 1077 days; 2.95 years 15,829 photos $200 14.7 photos per day 1.26¢ per photo
Olympus C3000 Zoom September 28, 2001 – December 5, 2003 798 days; 2.186 years 10,647 photos $450 13.3 photos per day 4.23¢ per photo
Kodak Easyshare DX6490 December 8, 2003 – March 17, 2006 830 days; 2.274 years 49,413 photos $500 59.5 photos per day 1.01¢ per photo
Nikon D50 March 22, 2006 – November 15, 2009 1334 days; 3.655 years 105,067 photos $570 78.8 photos per day 0.54¢ per photo
+$250 repair cost 0.78¢ per photo
106,916 shutter releases $570 80.15 shutter releases per day 0.533¢ per shutter release
+$250 repair cost 0.77¢ per shutter release
Samsung SL30 July 27, 2009 – December 1, 2016 2684 days; 7.35 years 21,616 photos $70 8.05 photos per day 0.32¢ per photo
Nikon D90 February 26, 2010 – August 20, 2022 4558 days; 12.48 years 208,758 photos $780 45.8 photos per day 0.37¢ per photo
290,157 shutter releases 63.65 shutter releases per day 0.27¢ per shutter release
iPhone 5 June 23, 2013 – December 23, 2014 548 days; 1.5 years 130 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 0.24 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
149 shutter releases 0.27 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
iPhone 6 Plus January 8, 2015 – January 11, 2018 1099 days; 3.01 years 4883 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 4.44 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
23,352 shutter releases 21.25 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
Nikon D7100
(Current)		 December 2, 2015 – April 18, 2024 3060 days; 8.38 years 49,609 photos $620 16.21 photos per day 1.25¢ per photo
126,462 shutter releases 41.33 shutter releases per day 0.49¢ per shutter release
iPod Touch 6 December 2, 2017 – December 10, 2021 1469 days; 4.02 years 5610 photos $160 3.82 photos per day 2.85¢ per photo
66,398 shutter releases 45.2 shutter releases per day 0.24¢ per shutter release
iPhone 8 Plus March 8, 2018 – March 21, 2021 1109 days; 3.04 years 17,751 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 16.01 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
252,264 shutter releases 227.47 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
iPhone 12 March 26, 2021 – March 19, 2024 1089 days; 2.98 years 9291 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 8.53 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
74,656 shutter releases 68.55 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
moto g pure
(Current)		 December 29, 2021 – March 24, 2024 816 days; 2.23 years 1254 photos $199 1.54 photos per day 15.87¢ per photo
6045 shutter releases 7.41 shutter releases per day 3.29¢ per shutter release
iPhone 14
(Current)		 March 21, 2024 – May 4, 2024 44 days; 0.12 years 1050 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 23.86 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
10,628 shutter releases 241.54 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release

Here’s the first iPhone 14 photo:

And the first moto g photo:

And the 500,000th photo (fittingly over Carnival, on a day when I took and kept 887 photos):

Photo count table:

0 25,000 50,000 75,000 100,000 125,000
October 6, 2000 January 12, 2004 October 20, 2004 April 10, 2006 April 20, 2007 December 4, 2007
1193 days 282 days 537 days 375 days 228 days
125,000 150,000 175,000 200,000 225,000 250,000
December 4, 2007 February 7, 2009 July 4, 2009 April 14, 2010 September 4, 2010 June 23, 2011
431 days 147 days 284 days 143 days 292 days
250,000 275,000 300,000 325,000 350,000 375,000
June 23, 2011 December 23, 2011 August 24, 2012 June 2, 2013 February 17, 2014 March 21, 2015
183 days 245 days 282 days 260 days 397 days
375,000 400,000 425,000 450,000 475,000 500,000
March 21, 2015 November 13, 2015 April 29, 2017 December 2, 2018 December 5, 2021 April 13, 2024
237 days 533 days 582 days 1099 days 860 days

And the usual graphs, starting with photos by month over time, log scale y-axis:

And photos by month over time, but with a linear scale y-axis:


Total number of photos taken over time:


And time between 1000 photos:


Life and the Universe and Everything

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Well, it’s 2022. That means that my photo journal and photo stats pages have been updated.

It’s been an odd year, with a summer of “things are starting to get normal again” promptly followed by a return to the usual pandemic mess, but with a few small changes: we’re allowing ourselves grocery store trips again, and trips to see the niblings and in-laws are facilitated by at-home COVID tests (and both being triple-vaxxed).


The end of the year was also marked by some new electronics, that are rare enough that they’re noteworthy. I bought a new laptop from Dell as a pre-Black Friday special for use when I eventually return to business travel (because our work laptops are now so locked down that we can’t run anything on them but work stuff) and was forced to buy a new phone because T-Mobile is phasing out 2G and my old flip phone would soon stop working. Both of these purchases are interesting for very different reasons.

As far as the laptop goes, I intentionally picked the slowest shipping possible (even though I qualified for free 2-day shipping) so it wouldn’t arrive while we were traveling for Thanksgiving. (I generally try not to buy things before we’ll be traveling, but in this case, the deal was limited in its time window.) And of course Dell promptly shipped the laptop the same day and it arrived exactly while we were gone, AND it didn’t require signature confirmation (for an $800 laptop!). I had to have a friend retrieve it for us.

I really wish that companies would have options for “don’t deliver before this date” delivery options, especially around holidays. This happened a few years back with my camera order for Black Friday as well, but Amazon support was much more helpful (mostly because they were actually working over the holidays and were able to tell the FedEx to hold off delivery for a few days… no such ability with Dell, who shipped the laptop late in the day and then had no support the next few days because of the holidays).

The phone was interesting mostly because I just wanted another flip phone… but the cheapest option they had was $126. The moto g pure was available for $186, and I figured the extra $60 was worth it just so I could have the camera and not have to carry my work iPhone around for photos all the time. So… I now have an Android phone, and it has been an adventure because its UI (and the entire OS’ general philosophy) is so different from Apple’s. I don’t think I like Android, but I’ll deal with it because, hey, $60 camera. :)

(It’s also interesting because the phone plan I’m on is so old it doesn’t have data, so I now have a smartphone with no data. But that’s really not much different than the iPod touch I used to carry around with me anyway, so that’s fine.)

Otherwise, that’s really been it? Here’s hoping that 2022 actually starts to represent a return to normalcy.

Photo Stats (Finally)

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Well, this post has been a *long* time coming. Thanks to the pandemic (and six [!] months of double-digit photos, including January and February 2021 with 19 and 18 photos), it’s taken three years (!) to take 25,000 photos and hit the next milestone of 475,000 photos.

We finally hit it yesterday, thanks to an impromptu Pittsburgh visit by Karl, featuring the second day in a row of long walks (10 miles yesterday, probably like 5 miles the previous day).

So… first up is the (full) camera stats table, this time featuring a new work phone (iPhone 12). (We had a couple new photos with the D90, but it’s not in regular use, so I’m keeping it in retired status despite it being usable.)

Intel Pocket PC camera October 6, 2000 – September 18, 2003 1077 days; 2.95 years 15,829 photos $200 14.7 photos per day 1.26¢ per photo
Olympus C3000 Zoom September 28, 2001 – December 5, 2003 798 days; 2.186 years 10,647 photos $450 13.3 photos per day 4.23¢ per photo
Kodak Easyshare DX6490 December 8, 2003 – March 17, 2006 830 days; 2.274 years 49,413 photos $500 59.5 photos per day 1.01¢ per photo
Nikon D50 March 22, 2006 – November 15, 2009 1334 days; 3.655 years 105,067 photos $570 78.8 photos per day 0.54¢ per photo
+$250 repair cost 0.78¢ per photo
106,916 shutter releases $570 80.15 shutter releases per day 0.533¢ per shutter release
+$250 repair cost 0.77¢ per shutter release
Samsung SL30 July 27, 2009 – December 1, 2016 2684 days; 7.35 years 21,616 photos $70 8.05 photos per day 0.32¢ per photo
Nikon D90 February 26, 2010 – July 23, 2021 4165 days; 11.4 years 208,718 photos $780 50.11 photos per day 0.37¢ per photo
290,005 shutter releases 69.63 shutter releases per day 0.27¢ per shutter release
iPhone 5 June 23, 2013 – December 23, 2014 548 days; 1.5 years 130 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 0.24 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
149 shutter releases 0.27 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
iPhone 6 Plus January 8, 2015 – January 11, 2018 1099 days; 3.01 years 4883 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 4.44 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
23,352 shutter releases 21.25 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
Nikon D7100
(Current)		 December 2, 2015 – December 5, 2021 2195 days; 6.01 years 34,064 photos $620 15.52 photos per day 1.82¢ per photo
94,082 shutter releases 42.86 shutter releases per day 0.66¢ per shutter release
iPod Touch 6
(Current)		 December 2, 2017 – December 4, 2021 1463 days; 4.01 years 5605 photos $160 3.83 photos per day 2.85¢ per photo
66,387 shutter releases 45.38 shutter releases per day 0.24¢ per shutter release
iPhone 8 Plus March 8, 2018 – March 21, 2021 1109 days; 3.04 years 17,751 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 16.01 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
252,264 shutter releases 227.47 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
iPhone 12
(Current)		 March 26, 2021 – December 5, 2021 254 days; 0.7 years 1114 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 4.39 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
9941 shutter releases 39.14 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release

Here’s the first photo taken with the iPhone 12:

And here’s the 475,000th photo (incidentally also taken with the iPhone 12):

Here’s the photo counts table. Thanks, pandemic.

0 25,000 50,000 75,000 100,000 125,000
October 6, 2000 January 12, 2004 October 20, 2004 April 10, 2006 April 20, 2007 December 4, 2007
1193 days 282 days 537 days 375 days 228 days
125,000 150,000 175,000 200,000 225,000 250,000
December 4, 2007 February 7, 2009 July 4, 2009 April 14, 2010 September 4, 2010 June 23, 2011
431 days 147 days 284 days 143 days 292 days
250,000 275,000 300,000 325,000 350,000 375,000
June 23, 2011 December 23, 2011 August 24, 2012 June 2, 2013 February 17, 2014 March 21, 2015
183 days 245 days 282 days 260 days 397 days
375,000 400,000 425,000 450,000 475,000
March 21, 2015 November 13, 2015 April 29, 2017 December 2, 2018 December 5, 2021
237 days 533 days 582 days 1099 days

And the usual graphs, starting with photos by month over time, log scale y-axis:

The same thing, but with a linear scale y-axis (full timescale versus 2010 onward):

Total number of photos taken over time (full timescale versus 2010 onward):

And time between 1000 photos (full timescale versus 2010 onward):

Those pandemic spikes on the graphs are unsurprising, but still unfortunate.

Photo Stats (Pandemic Edition)

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I took the last week off work and mostly spent it in a cabin in the middle of Blue Knob State Park, disconnected from the internet and the world. And it was really, really nice, especially given we hadn’t really been anywhere but home since early March.

In any case, photos still aren’t really happening, but it’s been almost two years since the last photo stats compilation, so I figured I’d do one even though I haven’t hit the next 25k milestone (475,000) yet (only at 470,682). October 2020 is also my 20th year of taking digital photos, so it’s also somewhat appropriate to do now.

As always, first is the (full) table of photos by camera. My Work iPhone has pretty much become my primary camera now because it’s more convenient to carry. I also haven’t used my D90 since I last went rock climbing (in November 2018, before the last stats), so I’m going to mark it as retired for now.

Intel Pocket PC camera October 6, 2000 – September 18, 2003 1077 days; 2.95 years 15,829 photos $200 14.7 photos per day 1.26¢ per photo
Olympus C3000 Zoom September 28, 2001 – December 5, 2003 798 days; 2.186 years 10,647 photos $450 13.3 photos per day 4.23¢ per photo
Kodak Easyshare DX6490 December 8, 2003 – March 17, 2006 830 days; 2.274 years 49,413 photos $500 59.5 photos per day 1.01¢ per photo
Nikon D50 March 22, 2006 – November 15, 2009 1334 days; 3.655 years 105,067 photos $570 78.8 photos per day 0.54¢ per photo
+$250 repair cost 0.78¢ per photo
106,916 shutter releases $570 80.15 shutter releases per day 0.533¢ per shutter release
+$250 repair cost 0.77¢ per shutter release
Samsung SL30 July 27, 2009 – December 1, 2016 2684 days; 7.35 years 21,616 photos $70 8.05 photos per day 0.32¢ per photo
Nikon D90 February 26, 2010 – November 30, 2018 3199 days; 8.76 years 208,699 photos $780 65.24 photos per day 0.37¢ per photo
289,872 shutter releases 90.61 shutter releases per day 0.27¢ per shutter release
iPhone 5 June 23, 2013 – December 23, 2014 548 days; 1.5 years 130 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 0.24 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
149 shutter releases 0.27 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
iPhone 6 Plus January 8, 2015 – January 11, 2018 1099 days; 3.01 years 4883 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 4.44 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
23,352 shutter releases 21.25 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release
Nikon D7100
(Current)		 December 2, 2015 – October 22, 2020 1786 days; 4.89 years 31,807 photos $620 17.81 photos per day 1.95¢ per photo
87,751 shutter releases 49.13 shutter releases per day 0.71¢ per shutter release
iPod Touch 6
(Current)		 December 2, 2017 – May 24, 2019 538 days; 1.47 years 5021 photos $160 9.33 photos per day 3.18¢ per photo
57,515 shutter releases 106.91 shutter releases per day 0.28¢ per shutter release
iPhone 8 Plus
(Current)		 March 8, 2018 – October 22, 2020 959 days; 2.62 years 17,410 photos $0
(Provided by work)		 18.15 photos per day 0.00¢ per photo
249,007 shutter releases 259.65 shutter releases per day 0.00¢ per shutter release

I added the 0th photo to the 25k photo table. We haven’t hit 475k yet, but we’re now on 692 days with another 5k-ish photos to go before hitting 475k. I blame the quarantine.

0 25,000 50,000 75,000 100,000 125,000
October 6, 2000 January 12, 2004 October 20, 2004 April 10, 2006 April 20, 2007 December 4, 2007
1193 days 282 days 537 days 375 days 228 days
125,000 150,000 175,000 200,000 225,000 250,000
December 4, 2007 February 7, 2009 July 4, 2009 April 14, 2010 September 4, 2010 June 23, 2011
431 days 147 days 284 days 143 days 292 days
250,000 275,000 300,000 325,000 350,000 375,000
June 23, 2011 December 23, 2011 August 24, 2012 June 2, 2013 February 17, 2014 March 21, 2015
183 days 245 days 282 days 260 days 397 days
375,000 400,000 425,000 450,000
March 21, 2015 November 13, 2015 April 29, 2017 December 2, 2018
237 days 533 days 582 days

And it’s graph time. First, number of photos taken by month, log scale y-axis:

Same thing but with a linear y-axis (second graph is since 2010):

Total number of photos taken through time (second graph is since 2010):

And amount of time between 1000 photos (second graph is since 2010, starting at 187,000):

The pandemic is really causing craziness, which I suppose shouldn’t too unsurprising. We have a bit of a photo spike in Feburary (Thailand for dad’s funeral) followed by a plummet as everything shut down.

Photo Catalog Woes

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I find myself incredibly frustrated with Adobe products again. I don’t know why it’s so hard to make sorting and tagging software that just works, although I suppose having over 465,000 photos may stretch the limits of any software. But my recent woes are not directly related to that…

I normally use Photoshop Elements 9’s organizer tool to organize and tag all of my photos. This works decently well, except when I got a new hard drive. For some reason, the software associates photos to a drive ID (rather than the drive letter), and is extremely stubborn about keeping that drive ID mapping intact when the drive letter changes. This was already a bit of a problem a year ago when I got a new (bigger) hard drive, found that all the photos were no longer found on the new drive (but still searchable with thumbnails, thankfully), and found that the built-in “Find Missing Photos” tool was a huge piece of unusable garbage that was completely impractical to use to fix everything.

It seems like newer versions of Organizer has the concept of “offline hard drives” and has an easy way for you to re-assign an entire drive or folder groups when they’re moved. But my version doesn’t. So it’s generally a horrible combination of “tries to detect drives” and “doesn’t have a way for you to fix things when the drive changes”.

So I lived with it for a year, assuming that I’d just have to deal with any photos older than November 2018 being unable to be directly opened. (Instead, I had to right-click, view the photo properties, and open the corresponding folder on the new hard drive and find the filename. Frustrating, but not completely unusable since I don’t deal with older photos all that often.)

I had the misfortune last weekend of plugging in my old hard drive at the same time as the new one while Organizer was open. The result is that now all photos, even the ones I imported in the past year, are now pointing to the old drive and are therefore running into the missing file problem. (I can’t think of why this would possibly happen, because clearly the new photos were never linked to the old drive ID.)

In any case, I had bought Lightroom a couple of years back (thankfully before they started their subscription-only garbage with it), and it seemed like a potential solution. So… install it, convert my Organizer catalog over and… great… none of the photos have imported their metadata and everything is displaying metadata conflicts and effectively have lost their ability to be searched by date, which is one of the major use cases I have for my organizer. (But at least fixing the drive letter change was easy in Lightroom after I figured out you have to use the folder view and collapse parents to the root. Which was also completely non-intuitive.)

Ignoring the fact that this is also incredibly stupid behavior (why would you take over 30 minutes to convert over a catalog file and then effectively throw away most of the data in that file… it didn’t copy thumbnails nor date data, and seems to have not gotten all of the tags/keywords), I found that the only way to really fix this is to tell it to import metadata from the actual files. Which means it needs to run through all 460,000+ photos. It takes about a second per photo, which wouldn’t be totally horrible if it didn’t also constantly “stick” on random files requiring me to manually remove the file from the library and re-add it before it can continue. So I can’t even just tell it to handle everything and leave it for a week… I have to do it in batches and monitor it fairly constantly.

But fine. Okay. I’ll eat the cost of doing that. Which brings us to today’s fun, where starting another batch of metadata syncing caused the video driver on my computer to crash, eventually requiring a hard reboot. Internet searches seem to indicate that this is a problem many people have with Lightroom in random use cases, maybe caused by a lot of keywords, maybe caused by a specific photo, but generally with no solution.

So I guess my option at this point is… upgrade Photoshop Elements to a version that properly supports drive changes and hope the catalog upgrade is compatible? Except I’m really loathe to give Adobe even more money at this point.

This should not be this complicated.

Maybe it’s time I stopped doing photo tagging.