November 2010 Archives

I got some 5000K CFL bulbs after reading the glowing (ha) reviews about how the higher-temperature blue light was more like real sunlight and made those on whom it shined happier and healthier.

I installed two in the overhead globes in our kitchen and was instantly transported to a fluorescent-lit basement. It's odd that the bluish light is referred to as having a higher "temperature" than yellowish light, because it feels colder. After a few days, though, I got used to it. I started to appreciate that things were the same color during the day as they were at night. Yellow lights in the rest of the house started to feel artificial. The kids agreed, too; they thought the bluish-white lights were cool (again with the mismatched temperature names!).

But Mary runs this house, and she has a 50.1% majority voting stake. Today we went back to the regular yellow CFLs. I suppose I'll use the blue ones in my office.

This isn't a great picture because of the glossy screen. I was sitting in my local coffeeshop working this morning, and had to turn down the screen brightness on my laptop because I was getting low on batteries. I noticed a bright area right in the middle of the screen, which persisted even when I turned off the screen backlight entirely. It wasn't a reflection.

Can you figure out what it was? (I eventually did.)

These are the digital cameras I've owned.

• 1998: Epson PhotoPC 600. On high resolution it shot 1024x768, one whole megapixel. I remember raving about how nobody would be using film in a few years. My excitement made people uneasy. What good was a picture that wasn't printed on paper?


• August 2002: Toshiba PDR-M25. A Costco impulse buy, totally research-free, right before Burning Man. Used thin SmartMedia cards. It worked, but that was about the best I could say about it.


• December 2005: Boing Boing talked me into getting the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5. It was a much better camera than I was a photographer. I tried the manual settings a few times to confirm they worked, but otherwise kept it on auto. Even though it was tiny compared to an SLR, it was still too big for me to carry it around, and as a result I didn't take many pictures in 2006 or 2007.


• January 2008: Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7. Buying this camera was a reaction to being outgunned by the DMC-FZ5. Only $129, auto-mode-only, and the smallest camera I could find that still took regular AA batteries. I've used this camera a lot. It never runs out of batteries, and if it does, I can buy more anywhere. It's simple to use, and I'm not afraid of losing it.

That brings us to today. This weekend I inexplicably got the urge to get a new camera. When I looked back at my camera-purchasing history, I was surprised to see that I've gotten a new one almost exactly every three years since 1998. Even better, my current camera is three years old! Time to shop.

Now, I'm still a rotten photographer. I can apply the Rule of Thirds pretty well, and I exhale while pressing the shutter button so that my pictures turn out sharp. I use Picasa's Warmify filter. So I haven't yet earned the right to get anything fancier than a point-and-shoot. That's why I settled on the Canon SD1400IS, which is about a half-generation old and costs $149. I'm sure the SD1400 will take pictures that are at least as good as the LZ7, and it's small enough that I'll be even more likely to have it with me. I'm not too worried about picture quality; even with its 14.1 million noisy pixels, I'm sure this camera will exceed my abilities.

Looking to 2014 (my next scheduled camera purchase), here are my plans:

• Keep the point-and-shoot in my pocket at all times. Work on composition, as well as learning how to do post-processing.


• Borrow my wife's Digital Rebel from time to time. Learn what an f-stop is.


• Try my hand at using the SD1400's 720p video capabilities. See whether I can stitch together a watchable home movie.

If these plans succeed, then I might be ready for the 2014 version of the Digital Rebel t2i. Check back here in three years.

Update 11/30/2010: I made the mistake of continuing to browse camera sites. I now have the SD4000IS on order as well, and will probably return the SD1400IS. The SD4000IS has the lower megapixel count that I wanted, a CMOS sensor for better low-light performance and fewer video artifacts, Eye-Fi integration, and some manual controls (shutter and aperture). On the other hand, it has a $110 higher price, and it's a bit larger (though it's still small). I decided not to get the SD4500IS, which is supposed to be newer and better, but the lens isn't as bright or wide-angle, and they corrected the error of their ways from the SD4000IS by removing the manual controls.