(no subject)

[which_chick]

I upgraded my Firefox yesterday. (Firefox is what I use to look at teh intarw3b, for people who are not technical by nature. It's what I use instead of the big blue e that a lot of people still use.)



So I love it. Favicons work better. The tabs have little clicky-close x's in the upper right hand corners so that you don't have to right-click, get dropdown, left-click-close. That alone was worth the price of admission (which was, incidentally, free). Seamless imports of my settings and shit, well, I expect that enough that it isn't worth mentioning as a feature. But yeah, everything seems smooth and stylish. It also appears to have a built-in red underlining spellcheck that does not agree with me about the spellings of assorted things.

People still using the big blue e, maybe it's time to try something different. Seriously, Firefox is small and quick and does almost everything I want a browser to do. (It does not show me how pages will look in Internet Explorer, which is something I need to check on occasionally for assorted html activities. It also doesn't have a button for "Let me toggle this webpage from 1600x1200 to 1024 x 768 resolution so that I can see how it looks for people using older computers.)

In other news, I am shopping for a dSLR camera. Kinda. They're really quite sexy. I want one. I don't have any fucking idea how to use a dSLR camera. No clue. None. I also don't know shit about camera lenses. I've never taken a class in photography. I have no formal training. I don't know jack shit about taking good pictures from an official perspective. I have no clue on all kinds of fronts, here. Thing is, I am running right up against the edges of what my current camera (Canon Powershot S400, 4 Mpx, purchased in July, 2003.) can do and it's starting to piss me off. Actually, it's been pissing me off for like a year and a half. I want better pictures.

I could buy a normal film SLR camera but I tried film cameras a couple of times when I was a sprout and there *were* no digital cameras. I found the experience terribly frustrating, not only because of the time delay (between taking the picture and seeing the picture I took) but also because I am a shitty enough photographer that if I had to pay money to develop the film, I would go broke trying to get decent shots.

Of every hundred or so pictures that I take, I like about twenty well enough to not-delete-them-immediately. In the weed-out, eventually I keep about five of every hundred. The rest go into the bit bucket. With film developing (back when that was something that you could have done at the WalMart or whatever), you'd get 24 pictures for $3.00 a roll. That's twelve and a half cents per picture. I cannot bring myself to spend $12.50 for five pictures. The way I see it, the cost of keeper pictures with a film camera is about $2.50 per... and my processing options, if I send the film off, are limited. Prints, cropping, blah blah blah -- all of that is stuff I'd have to hire done.

Digital photography means that my cost-per-picture is essentially the cost of the camera and accessories. It's a fixed cost. There is no per-picture cost. It's okay that I take lots of shitty pictures. Taking pictures is free. It's okay that I don't frame things as well as I should because cropping? Free. Color balance adjustment? Free. Red-eye removal? Free. Free, free, free. Looking at "finished" photographs on my computer, endlessly, or burning them to DVD discs so that I can save them for later? Free or nearly-free. If I ever get anything printed out, that costs money but I don't do it very much at all (except for cards for grandma) anyway because I don't *need* print copies of my pictures. I look at them on the computer. Everyone else looks at them on the computer. It's... paperless.

The Canon Powershot that I currently use, I have had for four years. It cost me four hundred dollars when I bought it, slightly more if you include the accessories I got with it. There are 1400 pictures in my pictures-I-have-taken folder. (These are just the ones I kept. The stuff I deleted immediately isn't in that count.) Assume that some of those are cropped or revised versions of the same image. Call it 1000 unique pictures. The cost-per-picture, there, is forty cents each... and I am not done with the camera yet. (By this metric, I will have to take a buttload of pictures with a dSLR camera to justify the cost of the thing. )

I want instant pictures that happen when I press the fucking take-the-picture button. The S400, while top of its class when I bought it, has definite shutter lag that makes taking pictures of toddlers, cats, and horses almost impossible... particularly if they're doing anything INTERESTING instead of standing still and staring at the camera.

I want pictures that look more like real-photographer pictures, not like snapshots. When I go to a horse show, I cannot take pictures of the horse-n-kid that look professional. Some of the problem is shutter lag (because you have to guesstimate timing. I realize that there will still have to be timing practice to get kid-going-over-jump or kid-going-around-barrel but a camera that can do burst shooting and takes the pictures when I hit the button will be a great help on that front.) and some of the limitation is that the camera can't zoom enough to fill the frame with the kid-n-horse. Both of these are equipment problems that cannot be solved by better technique on my part.

I'm pissed about the depth of field that my digital camera has, particularly at macro settings. I know my camera pretty well -- I've taken easily thousands of pictures with it -- and there are things that it simply cannot do. It just can't.

I'm pissed about indoor pictures. They're always either slightly grainy (no flash) or washed out (lots o' flash). (They're still way better than pictures from my childhood and pictures that my dad took with his old (1.3 Mpx, iirc) digital camera, but they're starting to look dated.)

I'm pissed about the limitations of the macro on my camera. It can see a lot, but I want more. I also want better focus control.

The autofocus is starting to piss me off. Generally, I can force the camera to "autoselect" the thing I want to have in focus, but sometimes I can't. In that case, there is currently nothing I can do. I want the ability to make the thing-I-want-in-focus actually BE in focus, at least as well as my eyes can see.

Also, there were a lot of after-the-fact accessories that I got with my first camera and I am of the mind that having the accessories is the way to go. With the first camera, I got the little leather case thing for it. I have used the little leather case thing every time I have taken the camera out of the house. That's actually where the camera lives when it is not in use. It's great. I got an extra battery for the camera. I have used the living shit out of the extra battery. The two batteries, fully charged, last an entire day of pictures. I got a bigger memory card for my camera so that it can hold more pictures than I feel like taking. I have never once regretted having the bigger memory card. It's nice to have more camera power/space than your desire to take pictures. The other way 'round is no fun at all.

I DO NOT want to take the new camera out to play horse or to drag it around on non-photography-oriented trips. I have a camera for doing that kind of thing, one that takes good pictures, one that I'm very comfortable using, and one with that can be handed to other people at horse functions so that they can take pictures of me on my horse. The current camera can stay the casual-functions camera. Thing is, I kinda think I want a better camera with better lenses for taking better pictures. However, since it's a big expense, I'm kind of looking around right now. "Looking around", mind, means staring directly at the Nikon D80.

How much would all of that cost? Well, the total damage is about $1200.00, including shipping, assuming I'm willing to take a factory-refurbished camera sold by an authorized dealer and greymarket on the (totally a good deal) zoom. If I want a brand-new camera, that goes up to $1400.00. (Price includes spare batteries, storage media. Does not include a camera bag or a tripod, which I will need for the bigger zoom.)

In other news, I have got to learn not to drive *quite* so fast on the five-lane between Everett and Bedford. I've had this lesson once before, to the tune of a hundred and nineteen dollars, and I had it again today. *sigh* On the plus side, I really like how the ticket says "51 mph" when I know damn well the speed gun said something more like "70 mph". Thank you, Mr. State Police Officer.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Sooper seekrit Firefox 2 killer feature: you don't need SessionSaver to have all your old tabs back when you re-open a Firefox that crashed or that you closed. You just set the home page to (I am translating back from the French, but I assume the original English is similar) "Show the last tabs and windows used." This equals love.

I cannot be persuaded to buy a DSLR until I can get a normal or wide-angle lens of similar price/quality ratio to Canon's or Nikon's mature ~28mm and ~50mm lenses. Moore's law doesn't yield bigger sensors, just denser ones, which will never ever solve this problem, so the manufacturers need to start making interchangeable-lens platforms that aren't lame hacks on top of 45mm.

(In practice, this means I will end up shooting with Minolta pocket digicams and, when I can afford it again, medium-format slide film, until probably 2010 or something.)

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

er, on top of 35mm, I should say. And of course there's always the possibility that they'll just focus more tightly on making lenses for 35mm setups that don't actually cover 35mm, so that (a) the camera is still too big to stick in a pants pocket and yet (b) you can't use the lens with film or a big sensor either.

Bah.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

WARNING: UNHELPFUL RAMBLE ABOUT FILM PHOTOGRAPHY TO FOLLOW

I want a digital slr something fierce, but I'm the kind of asshole who can't stand the idea of buying something that expensive and not having it be top of the line....and I have never seen that much money all at once. Ha! Seriously though, film photography is a lot of fun, if you get to make your own prints and what not. I think the system of buy the film....wait! now buy it AGAIN! is pretty stupid, though, and I'm not a fan of getting a whole roll of film printed to see if there are ones I like, etc. (Some people in beginning photo class would do this. I was like, hi, you can just get it processed for $2 (now $2.19..HIGHWAY ROBBERY) and make the contact sheet YOURSELF, for considerably less-- like $0.60/sheet if you're using 8x10. I mean, we had to pay the lab fee ANYWAY.)

Of course before photo class it never occured to me that you could get pictures made up bigger. My first camera was some sort of 110 camera (I was so young I don't even remember the brand or much about it--it had a panorama switch that would flip bars down over the film and give it that letterbox look. And you had to wind the film. I knew the panorama was cheezy and cheating me out of film space, but I still loved it.)
Why am I telling you this? Well, I have a similar problem with signal to noise. Back when I was 5 or 6, those 24 (or , if I was EXTRA GOOD, 36) exposures counted, and I very carefully composed each picture, judged light (it was point and shoot, but that didn't mean I couldn't choose well lighted pictures,) held my breath, pressed the button. Most of the pictures came out pretty good or at least acceptable. This photo class thing has me taking millions of similar pictures of the same damn thing.

Wow, that was unhelpful. I don't *have* a dslr, so I can't really offer any advice. I just like to RAAAAAAAMBLE.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I am not now and will not ever be a good-enough photographer to benefit from making my own prints off of real film. I can do a very-acceptable job with my digital Point-n-Shoot but I do not have an artist's eye for selecting subjects or for framing them. I can't find the money shot in the real world. I am a reasonably competent amateur, not an artist. I do not have a unique or communicative vision, a superior grasp of negative space, an alarmingly original sense of color, or much else that would enable me to go out and make art. I am related to artists (defined as "People who earn more than 50% of their income from selling their works of art") and I know what art looks like. I do not do that sort of work and pretending that I do, well, it ain't fooling nobody. This does not mean that I can't have a good time doing what it is that I do. I like playing around with my digital camera and I take very nice pictures. The fact that all they will ever be is very nice does not stop me from enjoying taking them, forcing my family to look at them, and spending time learning to take better very nice pictures.

A prosumer dSLR has enough goodies on it to keep me happy for about four years. I can probably put off getting another camera for some time because I can buy another lens for the dSLR camera and pretend like I've boughtten another camera. The fun-improvement and money-spent factors will be about the same and I won't have to learn how to use a new camera. I don't blow up anything bigger than a "35mm" dSLR camera print will go, so no worries there. Also, I take pictures of people (usually doing stuff) and horses (usually doing stuff) and everyday things and craft projects and my woodpile and assorted other normal-distance/macro nonmoving subjects. I take pictures of bugs, a lot, because I like them. Big panoramic pictures (either in nature or in cityscapes), an area where film excels, are not really a thing for me. For what I do with the camera, a prosumer "35mm" dSLR with two lenses (I am not buying an eight hundred dollar zoom no matter how sexy it is. <-- Save this statement for two years, please, so that you can hit me over the head with it when I'm going on about how sexy the eight hundred dollar zoom is.) will do me. I can't justify a professional level camera -- photography is a hobby for me, not a job or an all-consuming passion.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not a good or hardcore photographer, either. Printing pictures is just really fun.

Hey, as long as you don't get that $85,000 wide angle my teacher was talking about I think you're good. (I can't remember what the big deal about said lens was as at that point I had a migraine. Lenses are stupid expensive. That's why I like pinholes. Sewing needle....pepsi can....SCIENCE!)

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

I hate the X-to-close-on-tab because I have trained myself to stab vaguely at the tab I want, and when you have a lot of tabs open - as I often do - the X is approximately 20% of the tab's real estate. Therefore, I have a one-in-five chance of closing the tab instead of switching to it.

I also hate the fact that you can tell Firefox to open a page (such as an image or saved HTML doc on your hard drive) in a new tab, or in a new window, but not in the same tab/window you already have open. If there is some arcane way to change this, it has not been communicated to the grunts in the field. And, besides, an arcane way of doing it is stupid.

[zhasper.livejournal.com]

electroweak:

Arcane way:

go to about:config (I'm assuming you can get there, if not reply and let me know and I'll be more specific), twiddle browser.tabs.closeButtons. 1 = closebutton-per-tab, 0 = closebuttong-on-active-tab-only, 2 = no-close-buttons-on-tabs.

I don't know why you would *want* firefox to clobber your already-open window/tab with new content. Okay, i tmight be useful every now and then, when you want to open-on-and-close-another, but in the majority of cases, it's just going to result in you losing the window/tab with stuff you wanted to read later.

Fortunately, firefox is not written on the assumption that I know what's good for you, it's written on the assumption that you know what's good for you, and you should get it. Read http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction for more detail than I can give you here - except that as far as i can tell, the setting you actually want to twiddle is browser.link.open_newwindow (see http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_8.html for more).

In non-arcane news, you might like Tabbrowser Preferences - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/158/. then again, you might not - the comments on that post are mostly negative, and although I've installed it, I've disabled it for some reason.

[moderndayviking.livejournal.com]

So far I am very much loving Firefox 2.0 and want it to have my babies!

[moeckie.livejournal.com]

Because we could not yet afford a dSLR (drool), for the holidays the sweet man got me a Sony Cybershot H2, a 6mp jobbie with a 12x optical zoom lens with an additional 2x digital zoom, bringing zoomie goodness to 24x. I've never been a big fan of digital zoom, but this doesn't seem to pixelate on me and I've gotten some excellent bird photos. I'm quite pleased with it. The shutter lag is minimal, the zoom is crisp, the color saturation is lovely and I get amazing detail of my furry kids, who are my usual suspects. I also take lots of bird pictures and come spring will be photographing flowers again. This will keep me content until I can afford the dSLR, which I must have because I got to play with one this past summer and lovelovelove it. It also took one of the best photos I have of me, capturing ME, because of the feature I call clickclickclick, which allows you to hold the shutter button down and it keeps taking photos. As a result, there's a series of me starting to laugh, then laughing, that is some of the best pics of me I've had. I thought the Sony had this feature, but what it really does is take 9 shots in one, kinda like on a movie, and puts them in one frame, so you can't really pull out the one you want (or at least I haven't figured out how). That little feature pisses me off more than anything...if I ever figure out how to have just the one I want, I'll be happy.

Anyways, this camera is selling around now for $300-$349. It's a nice step between the regular digitals and the dSLR - they actually refer to it as a prosumer model.

I've not done my research into the dSLR yet (but must have, and will have to have a zoom, as that's what I enjoy using...used to have a 35mm SLR with an 80-300mm zoom, and adored it). I'm looking at the Nikon, as that's the one I played with, as well as Sony just because I tend to like what Sony does with widgets.

As to being an artist or whatever, I think wanting to have fun taking pictures is a wonderful reason for wanting the camera. What I've learned in the 20+ years I've been taking pictures (only 4 of those digital) is that it's the taking and taking of pictures that helps develop your eye. Digital lets you do that without thinking about the film. I used to do it *with* film (and heard no end of grief about it from the men I was with, let me tell you). Digital means I'll be outside and take 100 pictures without a thought, just because I can. Do I have a lot of pictures of snow and dogs? Yes. I only discard occasionally, so I have a lot of pictures on my harddrive. Currently moving them to disks so I can have some of that space back (I remember my first 1gig harddrive so fondly..."I'll never need that much space!" I remember saying...currently I've nearly filled up 160gig - of course, that man helps there with his little programs and such...we so need an external drive...but I digress).

Just doing my bit to help the economy :) I will be so jealous...mine's about a year off, I think. But I will have it. Oh yes, I will...

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I've been fighting the urge to go for a new camera because I'm pretty close to giving in and getting the dSLR. I'm also seriously favoring the Nikon d80 (more camera than that is more than I need, can appreciate, will use, and can afford) because it will do everything I want plus some. It also (I've seen reviews) has a very good point-n-shoot dummy mode. Very good.

To stave off purchasing, I went out today and spent some time with my trusty Canon S400, which still takes some damn fine pictures despite being four years old and having batteries that bitch like hell about the cold (it's near freezing today). "Battery Low" my ass. I'd put the camera back in my pocket for a couple of minutes and it'd warm back up for more pictures. The stuff I kept (I took sixty-odd shots, most of which I did not like) has been uploaded to my flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/64021525@N00/) under yesterday's date because I was confused about what day it was.

(Comment removed and re-added to fix0r link. I wish they had an 'edit comment' feature.)

[moeckie.livejournal.com]

As to Firefox, I use it at work and like it well enough (and for some reason one of my major programs will only work with it), but my new mouse there has a forward/back button *on the mouse* (means no moving mouse to get to the forward/back buttons on the browser) and Firefox does not support this feature. As I have mouse shoulder, the less moving the better for me, so I will continue to use the e for for now for serious browsing.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

I use Alt-[arrow] for forward/back...

[zhasper.livejournal.com]

You may find that setting mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 2 does what you want.

To get there, type "about:config" into the address bar (in firefox, that is), then type "mousewheel" into the "filter" box. You should be able to see the setting I mentioned; right-click, choose "modify", and set it to 2.

I don't know if it will do what you want though; for me, with my mouse, it goes back when i go right, and vice versa.

[moeckie.livejournal.com]

Hmm...Mine appears to be set at 2 already. I have tried the scrollwheel right and left and it just scootches the screen right or left. This new mouse has actual forward and back buttons that are delightful on IE but don't work on Firefox. I wish they did. The earlier mention of using alt and arrow keys has been tremendously helpful, though. Keystrokes are always preferred to me to moving my arm...I've had this mouse injury since my first ever mouse experience in 1995 or so. It's annoying.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

Does nobody else here just use Ctrl-W to close a tab?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

That only closes the active tab. I am frequently closing non-active tabs because I'm done with them... after I've left them. With the new Firefox, I can mouse over the tab, the little X lights up, and I make with the closing -- without interrupting my current tab. This is important for me because I don't generally turn loose of a page until I'm somewhere else I like better. Say, for example, that I'm reading a review of blah-blah lens that Nikon makes. Say I got there from a huge page o' lens reviews by the same guy, who has lots of time on his hands and can do a comparison between different models. If I'm done reading about, for example, the 18-135mm Nikkor zoom and now want to go comparison shop or whatever, I'll want (a) original guy's listing of lenses [in case I want to go look for something else] (b) page for lens I am reading about (c) google of lens make/model under discussion (d) assorted retailers of lenses...

Generally speaking, if I have fewer than three tabs up, it's a slow day. On Firefox, I have this page, my webmail, flickr, and my friends page. On the taskbar, I have Firefox, WinAmp, two folders of pictures, a picture viewer, and the update-my-livejournal widget I use. I probably need to join a twelve-step program...

[zhasper.livejournal.com]

Check out https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/. Gives you the window-make-smallerize function, as well as a *bunch* of other useful stuff.

for the viewering-in-the-big-E, try http://ieview.mozdev.org/