Today I went into Roberts intent on striking some sort of bargain for a D80. I’d gotten tired of waiting patiently for my dammed camera.

I’ve been waiting on D80 body, but they have been in short supply. Sounds like Nikon is hoarding them in order to repackage them with the new VR lens at some point in the future, or something. I talked with the owners and we struck a deal for D80 kit, and they bought the kit lens back for the difference between the kit price and the body only price, effectively selling me a body for the retail price. So, rock on Roberts++, I’m glad I was able to give them my business, even if it took forever.

I spent some time playing with the camera for a few hours today and upped some photos I took around the house. The weather was pretty overcast and boring, so there wasn’t much outside to test shoot. But the cats were good enough. After Jenn went to bed I figured out some more controls, and look forward to poking at things more tomorrow.

For some reason this is my favorite shot of the day:

One of the very few traditional hobbies I’ve ever enjoyed has been photography.

When i was a kid, my Dad got me this crappy point and shoot Kodak camera. It was all manual with no options or features. I used the hell out of it for a long time, and took some really shitty photos. One day a friend tossed me his old Samsung zoom film camera, and I was so excited. I mean this baby had 2x ZOOM! And, sweet merciful christ, it advanced and loaded film with a motor… very high tech shit right here, let me tell you.

I took a decent amount of photography in High School, and while I loved it and kicked ass at it (well, enough to get As every semester with little work), the hassle, and materials and the general overwhelming cost of actually getting into doing real photography was enough to chase me off… Hated film, hated developing film, hated the developing chemicals. And I wasn’t even doing color prints, this was fairly painless B&W stuff.

So, I gave it up and instead picked up… well… I guess video games and staring at the internet to keep my mind busy for the next few years.

I was working at UITS and I rounded up enough spare cash to purchase a Kodak DX3900. A crappy little point and shoot camera that worked well enough. It had a lousy range, and wasn’t very flexible. But, I got a few good shots off like this, this, or this. But nothing I ever felt too impressed with… I got good feedback, and general encouragement to learn more and get better. But, my camera started limping, the battery stopped holding a charge, and the viewfinder is about 20% off center of the final photo.. so I stopped using it.

I was considering getting a new Point and Shoot like Jenn’s Canon PowerShot A710 that I’ve been borrowing, but every time I borrow it I feel frustrated. It’s like I have to fight the camera to take any real pictures. I see friends taking photos in the same settings with the same light, with amazing differences in the outcome.

I’m not saying that I don’t get a few good shots, I pulled a few decent shots out of my ass, but comparing to pictures a friend/coworker took there’s really no comparison, especially at lower light levels.

I tend to take pictures candidly with no flash, which leads to a lot of blurring and frustration for me. It’s obnoxious to take close to 200 pictures and having only like 5-10 clear enough for me to post process them at all.

So, camera envy, coupled with feeling like I wanted a non computer centric hobby lead me to start looking into getting a nicerany camera. I decided that I wanted a DSLR, because the pictures I was seeing from those cameras were just generally on a higher level. The larger sensor, combined with better ranges, lenses and features make these the only really attractive cameras to me. Plus DSLRs excel in rapid burst shooting and instant on, the prospect of a camera going from cold to ready to shoot in less than a second is very intriguing.

So I figured I’d take the easy route and just see what people on Flickr used. Flickr has a neat chart of camera usage and I took the first few camers off the list, and looked into them.

First up was the Canon Digital Rebel XTi. The XTi is Canon’s entry level DSLR camera. It’s small, uncomplicated, self cleaning, and a really decent camera. It runs about 600-700 and is a pretty popular camera. I was pretty set on getting one until I got my hands on one. I have rather big hands, and the XTi is a tiny camera. Well, it’s not that tiny, it’s just too small for me to get a comfortable grip while holding it. I have to really pinch it to keep a grip on the body. I wish my hands were smaller, but what can you do.

I took a look at the D80 that had been recommended to me by a friend, it’s a lot more expensive, breaching the 900 mark, but not quite passing into the 1k territory. The difference was apparent immediately. The D80 was larger, more solid, fit in my hand better, and had a much more usable interface. Top mounted Status LCD, a hud in the viewfinder, higher ISO/ranges.

So I’ve been leaning towards the D80, but I’m a little gun shy. On the one hand, I can afford it without that much trouble. But on the other hand it’s hard to justify getting a Camera on this level when all I’ve ever owned were shitty Point and Shooters. Plus, whenever I buy anything this expensive that’s not a computer I always worry that I’m just going to not use it either out of fear of breaking it, or out of indifference. There’s also the nagging fear that I may just suck, and I don’t want to pay 1k just to find out I suck.

Although, I guess that if I decide to get rid of it I’ll be able to get a decent price for it around town or on eBay to some journalism student or something. I also worry about whether I’m going to like the fact that it’s noisy, unlike P&S cameras, and I also worry about how much more it weighs. If I think it’s too big I fear I might just leave it home all the time.

I’ve still got a lot of reading to do, and I plan to go handle the cameras a few more times before I make a decision. But, I wanted to brain dump a little. Found a good comparison between the XTi and the D80 I need to read in detail.

Oh! Before I forget, Roberts, the camera store down on Kirkwood, is amazing. Their prices are excellent, their staff is polite and knowledgeable, and I look forward to giving them more business. LocalBusinesses++

I’ve noticed that there are a few things that I stopped doing in my life that made me very happy. I like to blame other people for the stopping, but I have no one to blame but myself for the not starting, if that makes sense.

The Stuff:

• Photography
• Video Games other than Warcaft
• Biking
• Climbing

Photography

I used to do a lot of amature photography. However, I stopped when I started to hate my piece of shit camera. I have a 5 year old Kodak 2.1 megapixel camera that eats batteries and is just bad all around. I contemplated getting a new camera but decided that the idea was not feasible due to monetary constraints.

Now a days I steal Jenn’s camera when I want to take pictures, but her camera is not really what I’m looking for… I’m looking for a camera that is a little less “turn the dial to the scene you want” and more hands on, I don’t want the camera to think for me… well a little help wouldn’t be bad, obviously, but include me on the decisions.

I would like an SLR camera, I was thinking that Jenn’s camera is a great little camera for general use, but it doesn’t seem to fare well in low level situations without a flash, and I hate having to flash all the time, it makes people edgy and I like candid shots.

Since Jenn has a nice general camera, I’m looking for a more high end deal that’s not as portable, but will produce higher quality pics. Looking at flickr, the two nice options are the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi and the Nikon D80 I’ve not spent any real time looking in to this at all… I imagine this will be a lengthy search.

I also upgraded my flickr account to Pro, I hate gallery now. Stupid slow PHP piece of crap.

Video games other than Warcraft.

Money stopped me from playing video games other than Warcraft sometime around the time I met Jenn. I don’t really blame Jenn for the whole thing, but I blame Warcraft for being such a wonderful entertainment source for the buck.

I’ve been picking up a few games to get me more up to date.

First off was Bioshock which is an art-deco steam-punk anti-Utopian FPS-RPG set in Rapture, a city at the bottom of the pacific ocean, in the 1960’s. The game is great, and I normally shun these kinds of omg-whats-lurking-around-the-corner games, but I made an exception for this wonderful narrative. I’ve not finished it yet, so a real review isn’t really something I can do yet.

Then I snagged The Orange Box a compilation of all the HL2 games, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. I’ve never played Hl2, so this was a cool opportunity to catch up on the series (yes, there is one wanker who never picked the game up, so shoot me, I was poor and uninterested as I never finished Halflife (cue further shocked gasps)) I just finished Halflife 2 and I was impressed, the gameplay while very linear shakes things up a bit and wanders between pseudo zombie horror and sci-fi gun battles. The story is compelling and the acting well done. Highly recommended if, like me, you’re stupid and never picked it up.

On to Team fortress 2, I can’t think of a time I’ve played a game like TF2 (Class based, online, territory control, FPS) that was so well balanced. Every class has a niche, and a fight between any two classes could honestly go either way, it’s quite refreshing. No more, “Oh, I’m a medic so I’m a bitch when it comes to virtually every other class” or ”oh look I’m an engineer, which means I’m a free kill to everyone who looks at me funny!”. Now I play an engineer, and I’ll fuck you up if you’re not paying attention, ph34r my level three turret! I’ve been playing an inordinate amount of TF2 over the past few weeks, and encourage people to pick it up, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

Last but certainly not least, is Portal. Portal is quite simply one of the best games I’ve played in quite some time. You should feel bad if you’re a gamer and have not traveled down this veritable physics acid trip coupled with some of the best macabre humor I’ve seen in a game. While it’s quite short (3 hours or so) and not too hard, until you start beating the ancillary challenges, it’s well worth the $20 to buy it off steam. Besides, you totally get cake at the end. Trust me.

So I’m well on my way to getting back in to video games, and it’s really nice. I hope to keep the pace up. I got a lot of games to beat.

Biking

So Biking mainly stopped because I moved in with Jenn, and we live on the top of a hill. Biking around the neighborhood is fucking obnoxious, I coast downhill for like 15 minutes, and then wear myself pumping uphill for 10 minutes trying to get home, and end up walking my bike… lame. I quickly decided I hated biking in this area. However, Jenn bought me a bike rack, and so I will take my bike to campus and I will ride it around, and it will be good. The bike is in the shop right now getting tuned, should be able to ride it once things dry up around town.

Climbing

Climbing was something I used to do fairly religiously with Joe and Anami. I stopped when Melissa started acting like I shot her puppy every time I went out to hang out with anyone for any reason. I tried a few times to get back in to the swing of things, but trying to get a regiment going without a committed partner is kind of like running around in a circle, it’s exercise, sure, but it gets old and boring after a while. I’m going to start up again with Jenn, and we’ll see how that goes. She won’t be able to go very often so I might get in touch with a friend whose in my AI class and see if we can’t start going… might be able to make a go of things.

Here’s hoping I can get these things going, I think if I can start back up these four things and keep them going I’ll be much more happy in general, and that’s always good.

For now though, I’m sick, and this entry was a monumental effort … and I’m sure it’s nonsensical. But, who cares, I’m going to bed.