Category Archives: Photo Stuff

Meme: ITG and comprehensive camera stats

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It seems that 8 will be moving to the bay area at some point in the near future. This makes me sadder than it should. Meh.

As for meme topics, we have ITG. Which I’m actually not quite sure what to say about.

The first time I played DDR was in a Gameworks in Arizona Mills, probably in middle school or so. I didn’t know what I was doing and stepped on the arrows pretty much as they came on screen. Then I added another player after the first song (which that machine apparently let you do), wasting some money because player 2 only got two songs instead of three.

I think I started being interested in it in high school, when we went to a Fry’s Electronics and they had the PS version of DDR set up with pads. This was intriguing, and my parents bought me a PSOne, DDR, and two mats with the promise that I would play it for exercise fairly often. (Of course, this didn’t really happen. I was such a horrible kid. :P)

My first real experience with the arcade machine (and hard pads) then was in college when I came to CMU and discovered the DDR machine in Scotland Yard my freshman year. From photos, it seems the ITG machine appeared around December 2005. I remember the brief period of time when the machines existed side-by-side, and I remember being annoyed at the “elite” ITG players who wouldn’t alternate with DDR players (like myself) since you couldn’t play both machines at once (the music got mixed up and way too confusing and threw everyone off).

I think I really got into ITG the summer I had the PLSC internship in Pittsburgh (2006). I played with 8 at least once a week every week that summer, and managed to progress up to 10s. (I think the desire to avoid my room and my horrible roommate at the time had a lot to do with this.) I’ve pretty much been playing since then, although my general interest in it seems to have lowered somewhat.

At this point, I’ve stopped trying to improve on song difficulty, and have mostly resigned myself to playing casually in the 9-11 range. I also really, really like marathons and mods, so I’ll do that a lot. But the ITG machine at CMU has been having issues lately, and the stupid company in charge of it keeps screwing it up, so I don’t know if it’s really something I’ll continue doing regularly.

Also, wow… I’m making a lot of posts this month. This is weird.

I now have 296,595 tagged photos in Photoshop organizer. I think we’ll break 300k by the end of August. Or maybe not, because I’ve been taking fewer photos lately. We shall see.

I went through and tried to find the first and last photos taken by each camera. Photoshop organizer doesn’t let you sort by filename, and I have way too many files to do EXIF data searches, so some of this may be off by a few. (In particular, finding the “last” photo my Intel camera took is a pain because it still works, and I was using it for its portability even though high school even when I had gotten the Kodak camera. And it didn’t even record any EXIF data, and you can’t do a “negative” search in organizer. So blah.)

And it turns out the photos aren’t all that interesting anyway. So here’s just the dates of each camera’s first and last photo.

Intel Pocket PC camera October 6, 2000 September 18, 2003 1077 days; 2.95 years
Olympus C3000 Zoom September 28, 2001 December 5, 2003 798 days; 2.186 years
Kodak Easyshare DX6490 December 8, 2003 March 17, 2006 830 days; 2.274 years
Nikon D50 March 22, 2006 November 15, 2009 1334 days; 3.655 years
Samsung SL30 July 27, 2009 Current (last July 20, 2012) 1089 days; 2.98 years so far
Nikon D90 February 26, 2010 Current (last July 25, 2012) 880 days; 2.411 years so far

Getting numbers for how many photos each camera shot would also be interesting, but not easy to do.

Edit: Searching by filename and using the power of maths should give reasonable estimates of total photos. Therefore:

Intel Pocket PC camera 15,829 photos $200 14.7 photos per day 1.26¢ per photo
Olympus C3000 Zoom 10,647 photos $450 13.3 photos per day 4.23¢ per photo
Kodak Easyshare DX6490 49,413 photos $500 59.5 photos per day 1.01¢ per photo
Nikon D50 105,067 photos $570 (+$250 repair cost) 78.8 photos per day 0.54¢ per photo (0.78¢ per photo including repair cost)
Samsung SL30 18,571 photos $70 17 photos per day 0.38¢ per photo (so far)
Nikon D90 97,068 photos $780 110.3 photos per day 0.80¢ per photo (so far)

Cost estimates don’t include charges for accessories (extra batteries and lenses in the Nikon case), electricity, or memory cards.

Meme: Photography and Pokemon

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Before I forget, I should wish Greg a very happy birthday. Yay birthday.

I’ll never forget my first trading card game and my first trade. Back in May 1999, I went with a friend (Jim) to a GameStop. He picked up some boosters and I bought a starter deck plus two booster packs of the Pokemon card game. Opening the packs yielded a holographic Raichu and a Clefairy Doll for the rares. (Of course, I had no idea about rarities at the time, since I had never touched or seen a trading card game before.) This was also at the same time as a Pokemon card game promotional thing or something, because I also had my picture taken with a giant Pikachu card (for me to take home on a floppy disc!).

Jim and I sat down at one of the provided tables to play a game, and I lamented about how I couldn’t play the Raichu because I didn’t have a Pikachu card to evolve it from. One of the younger kids playing nearby apparently overheard and offered to trade me one. He looked through my small stack of cards and asked for the Clefairy Doll. Upon Jim’s advice, I made the trade of my rare for a common. (“That thing only had 10 HP, and the Pikachu has 40 HP. You got a great deal.”)

Fortunately, several years later when we had both learned what rarities (and rarity symbols) were, he traded me a Clefairy Doll for a Pikachu, and all was well. Yay noobness.

But that’s not really what I want to talk about here. Continuing with meme topics from Jess (after quite a hiatus), we have photography.

Photography is one of those things I enjoy doing, and have periods off and on of wanting to do professionally (or, at least, with more dedication that I do now). My first digital camera was a Intel Pocket PC Camera (retailing for $199 at the time) when I was in middle school (late 2000).
My parents were redoing the front yard at the time (removing the palm trees and grass and replacing them with rocks and gravel), and promised me a digital camera if I helped. Of course, being the horrible child I was, I managed to get the camera first, and then proceeded to do nothing to help (except take photos of my parents working on the front yard, which are some of the first digital photos I ever took).

The camera took photos at an amazing 640×480 resolution, more than enough for anyone, and came with an option to switch to 320×240 resolution in case you needed to take more photos (since there weren’t memory card options).

This camera satisfied me only about a year. I got my next camera, a Olympus C3000, my first year of high school (2001). It took amazing (for the time) resolution photos, and had a flash, and was the best thing ever. I actually still have the camera, and it still works, even though the drivers no longer work in Windows XP (or 7) and there is no card reader that can read the SmartMedia cards it takes.

That camera lasted only a couple years (2003), when it started to have issues with exposure metering. (Photos were coming out completely black every so often.) It was quickly replaced with a Kodak Easyshare DX6490 with its amazing 10x optical zoom and even better resolution. Naive me referred to the three steps as a “casual” camera, a “semi-professional” camera, and a “professional” camera. Upon reflection now, it seems horribly stupid of me to think that a point-and-shoot that didn’t even have full manual control could be considered “professional” by any means.

In any case, the Kodak lasted until my Sophomore year of college (2006), when it proceeded to die in a series of unrecoverable errors (the last photos it took were at the fondue party at Wes’ house). It was replaced a week later with a Nikon D50 (with its kit 28-80mm lens) that I shot for the following 3 years (including a series of repairs by a horrible company that didn’t fix it right the first time).

The D50, in turn, was replaced by my current Nikon D90 (in February 2010) after it died in November 1999, which still seems to be in great condition. Overlapping the two is my Samsung SL30, which is a crappy $80 point-and-shoot I picked up just to have an “easy to carry” camera.

So I seem to be in the habit of going through cameras every 2-3 years. This, I suppose, is somewhat expected given how much I abuse and use them (my D50 had over 100,000 shutter releases when it died completely, via the mirror refusing to flip).
There’s a summary of my cameras, which is accurate minus the D90, here.

As for photography in general, I find it to be a good hobby, a good way to remember my life, and a good way to remove some level of awkwardness at large gatherings (using my camera as a shield, which I have previously written about). I don’t think I’m particularly good at it… I just take thousands of photos, which means I’m bound to get one or two good ones out. Most of my shooting is casual snapshots… I used to do more studio shooting when I had access, but in retrospect find the setting too boring and limiting.

I suppose the good thing about taking so many photos all the time is that I often manage to get candid shots of people that you wouldn’t otherwise get. People are so used to me having a camera all the time (and taking their picture all the time) that they’ve stopped noticing. As a photographer, that’s one of the best places to be.

Anyway, photo meme = moar photo. Here’s Chris with the awesome pillows I got from Thailand.

I don’t know what else to write about photography. If you have anything specific you’re curious about, feel free to ask.

Life and Booths

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life has gotten an update bringing it to today.

The Celebrations expansion of People Wars has also been released. Yay more cards.

Booths have been happening all week. For some reason, I’m generally less interested in midway this year than previously. Which is still quite a lot of interest, but not as much as prior years (only about 1200 photos since Saturday, as opposed to previous years when I shot easily 1000 a day during Carnival week).




I think maybe the combination of being in Pittsburgh anyway, only taking tomorrow and Friday off (instead of the entire week), and having been through 6 previous Carnivals is making the entire thing seem less like a big deal.

Regardless, Ian gets here tonight (technically tomorrow), Tim and Kayleigh get here tomorrow, and Mars and Dan get here Friday, so there will soon be awesomeness with awesome people. Al-Tim has been here since Sunday.

Yay awesomeness.

Life and cameras

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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.

Recovery

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Got back from San Francisco last night. Woke up this morning at 10:30 (!) and immediately felt like crap, so I decided to take the day off. Best idea ever. I managed to sleep in (some more), run KoL turns, process and tag all 1871 photos from the trip, and have meals on time. (Only 1871 photos? I’m getting more restrained with photos. Kind of. At least compared to my Carnival 2009 trip where I took 10840 photos and my Carnival 2010 trip where I took 6733 photos.)

As such, photos are now posted to photos. It was kind of an awesome week.
life has also been updated.


I owed Sharon some money. I decided to give it to her entirely in $1 bills (as per an earlier email conversation). It was awesome.

A couple photos also deserve a bit more explanation.


That’s the most oblivious cat ever. It always sits in exactly the same pose with a big goofy smile on its face. No wonder its owners left it behind.


San Francisco constructions sites cause cancer. Too bad there’s construction sites everywhere.


Poor Koyel. We didn’t think she would stop talking on the phone. Well, at least Shawn and Sharon didn’t. Or something. I was kind of out of it at the time.


It’s Andrew with Andrew! Afterwards, we tried to draw him in Crayon physics. It didn’t work nearly as well.


ZMONG best tofu ever :O