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written by owen, published 2020-Aug-07, comment
You know the music videos where everyone breaks out into dance? Here are part 2 of 2. You can watch part 1.
written by owen, published 2020-Aug-06, comment
my trusty canon powershot ( 12.1 MP, f/2.7, 1/2.3") is beginning to show its age. I originally bought it in 2014 for $150usd (released in 2011). It is my 4th canon powershot. I have to applaud canon for their cheap p&s pocket cameras that are able to stand survive 6 years of use, 4000+ photos so far (2015-2020). The firmware unfortunately never gets updated and the soft plastic lens ring around the self closing blades now get stuck in a open position. The camera I had before had a metal enclosure.
Pictures on the internet nowadays are hyper filtered and surreal - I am not a fan - I can see why people like the smooth, fake color look. But sharpness has always been a problem with small sensor cameras like the canon powershots. If the light is not perfect and colours are not bright you are going to get muddy/fuzzy pictures.
It is hard to find a camera that is both small and good quality - its probably against the laws of physics. But I am willing to compromise. Fast auto focus and IBIS is also important. I dont want interchangeable lenses. I have been watching lots of youtube.
So after a couple months of searching around I reduced my options to the canon g9x, a small camera with a bigger 1" sensor (four times as large as my old camera) costing 3 times as much at 450$ usd. At the this point the cost increase was expected because I want make a big jump in quality/speed. I need to leave the tiny sensor market. Things are moving fast and I need to shot and run - in a manner of speaking. Plus I keep watching old videos of film photographers from the 1940s whos pictures still look good 60 years after they were taken. My old pictures are so low quality I dont even bother to go back into the archives. So if I am going to be taking pictures I want to at least get a nice quality.
To whom much is given, much is tested. I also got interested in street photography so the small size of the canon g9x and the increased resolution should prove to be an asset. But there was a snag; the canon G9x is currently on version 2 or Mark2 which was released in Jan, 2017. That is a full 3 years ago. If you know anything about modern tech you know that buying old tech is a losing battle. USB-C ports are far better than micro-usb.
So i waited for canon to release a new version. waited and waited. no new version. Still waiting. Other cameras in the same lineage such as the g7x and g5x got a mark3 update in 2019 so I figured the g9x was next in line. I patiently watched the news feeds and rumor sites. While Canon released new cameras, printers, crowd counting cameras, all sorts of tech - pumping out new cameras costing upwards of $5000 usd. Yet no G9X mark 3 with a USB-c port. #Shame
I rarely edit my photos; partly because my computer is slow, and have too many hobbies, so post-processing or video is no more room. A couple years ago I started using auto-contrast in picasa3 but thats pretty much all I do. I never crop my images - because I am lazy. So when I am taking pictures with my point and shoot I need to make sure the picture looks "good enough" the first time I take the shoot. Right now I am averaging 60% good pictures - IMHO. This may seem high because I have been taking pictures with these tiny cameras for YEARS and I know what they can and cannot do. The problem is whenever I go wild and I try to be fast or artsy my "good" picture rate goes down to 10%. This fact limits my range of pictures. So I need to up my game.
Some people say the best camera is the camera you have with you - which usually means a smartphone camera. The problem I have with smartphone cameras is that the pictures lack detail - the look fine on the phone screen but trash in print or on a large screen. The ergonomics of using a phone is off-putting. Not enough options and it gets costly if you want better quality.
Anyway while I hunt for a new small camera you can browse my old pictures (taken with my current canon 300HS) or look at a few I took recently with my cellphone below (edited in black and white because my phone camera is trash 8 MP, f/2.2, 31mm);
written by owen, published 2020-Jul-24, comment
Well these are certainly interesting times. One would not ever in a million years have guessed that the world could exist in such a state. If someone had told me this several years ago I would have thought them mad because there is "no budget", "no budget for this" (in a Chinese accent). But magically so it is and here we are. But what can we do? We just keep chugging on.
I need a new camera but I need to write a whole technical article on the "whys" and "why nots". As I always do - I must think about everything in depth. It is a skill I have grown to understand as I get older. You cannot regret something that you spent 6 months in quarantine thinking about. The thoughts cemented in your brain so hard you would need hard drugs to dislodge. We your reality is not "real" your tend to be very on happy. But even happiness in itself is a construct of your imagination.
If you asked me what I have been doing for the past couple weeks I could not tell you. Though I am working on stuff it is rather hard to see clearly now the rain is gone, all of the dark clouds have disappeared. What it is with all this confusion and fear mongering going on in society. If consider that we are living on a ball of fire which is spinning around another gigantic ball of fire - people seem to want to ignore this fact and create little personal blankets in which they can roll around inside while they rage war on other people.
written by owen, published 2020-Jul-18, comment
You know the music videos where everyone breaks out into dance? Here are part 1 of 2.
I can't believe this video is 10 years old. totally forgot about it until I stumble across it this evening.
Tommorow I will upload part 2 of my list.
written by owen, published 2020-Jul-12, comment
Totally forgot to put a description in this post but nothing much new to report in this COVID times but you can check out my previous visits in Jan2020, Oct2015, Dec2017, May2015 which have longer descriptions climate change, beach erosion etc.
Beach construction is still expanding.
A mysterious new island appears. low tide?
