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Mar. 3rd, 2007 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 09:21 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 05:30 pm (UTC)