Are Point and Shoot Camera's Going Extinct?

When working on a post on how to buy a camera, I was looking for some statistics on camera ownership.  I couldn't find anything good that was recent, so I decided to check out Google Trends (tool that shows number of searches over time) and the results were not what I was expecting.


I entered "digital camera" and what I got is a very steady decline in searches since 2004.

At first I thought this must have something to do with the use of the word "digital camera" declining rather than actual interest in digital cameras declining.  But then I saw an article from 2004 (where the little "A" flag is) that was called Sharp forecasts the death of the consumer digital camera.  Basically the article states that the growing quality of cameras attached to phones will eventually kill off the need for consumer digital cameras.


Well, it's 8 years later, and consumer digital cameras have not yet gone the way of the dodo But smartphone camera's have come a long way from the 2 to 3 megapixel cameras the article was talking about, to Nokia's recently announced 41 megapixel behemoth.


Another interesting trend I found was the oposite graph generated from searching "DSLR".

It seems that people's interest in learning more about photography beyond the consumer level has not waned. I would even go so far as to say that many people probably get started taking pictures with their phone and eventually move on to a DSLR.


What does this all mean?  Well pretty much, it's just an observation of the evolution of technology.  We used to have separate mp3 players and phones.  The smartphone revolution pretty much did away with the need for a separate music playing device for most people.  In the very near future, we might be saying the same thing about point and shoot cameras.

Act of Valor [Movie Review]

I've always been a sucker for a good war movie.  I think being thrown into a world that is unfamiliar to me is one of the things I love about the movies, and little is more foreign to me than war.  

Now to me, the best war movies are the ones that successfully engross you in the day to day reality of a specific set of soldiers.  Saving Private Ryan for example, captured the epic scope of WWII by following a small group of soldiers throughout some of the biggest battles in recent history.  The Hurt Locker was a great example of the slow nerve-racking intensity of the Iraqi war.

Act of Valor attempts to capture the versatility of possibly the greatest fighting force in the entire world... the Navy SEALS.  The producers of this film worked with the Navy to create a fictitious story that weaves through multiple missions based on real Navy SEAL missions.  The idea is, everything that happens to the characters in this film, has happened to real Navy SEALS.

This leads to two things to point out about this film.

1. The acting leaves much to be desired (although really isn't as bad you might think).
2. It honestly feels like what you're watching is real.

The action scenes in this movie are absolutely phenomenal.  It's hard to explain how unique if feels than other action/war movies.  The way my wife described it afterwords is that "it just seemed so professional."  Once the mission began, there was no witty banter, no funny one-liners, and in general no characterization.  Most of the time, you didn't know who was who since all of the SEALS had on so much camo.  It was very plainly good guys vs bad guys.

Now normally that would be considered a bad thing, but the strategy involved in the missions themselves were so intriguing that taking the time to develop characters would simply be distracting.

The story itself left much to be desired.  The bad guys were pretty generic as was the overall plot line.  The first 15 to 20 minutes were pretty slow, and didn't really do much to go into depth of the characters.  I will say that, despite plenty of cheesy dialogue, I really found myself liking the two main characters a lot (although this probably has to do with their "good ole boys" accents than anything else").

Rating: 7/10

Overall this movie was fantastic, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes war movies.  It's definitely lacking it some areas, but as a way to experience what it's like to be a Navy SEAL you will not likely find anything better.

Beyond the Screen:  Another amazing thing about this movie, is it was primarily shot using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR.  That's absolutely amazing that a camera designed for photojournalism could perform so well on the big screen.  

This also allowed for some crazy angles that wouldn't be possible with most modern filming equipment.  Now, I know 5D's have been used for specific shots in movies (Iron Man 2 comes to mind), but I think this is the first film to make it to theaters with a DSLR as it's primary camera.

Here's a behind the scenes video on how Act of Valor was created.

Also, if you are at all interested in creating films with DSLRs you should definitely check out Act of Valor cinematographer Shane Hurlbut's blog hurlbutvisuals.com

Control your Canon DSLR with your Android Phone/Tablet

Ok this is awesome.  Probably the most difficult thing about shooting video with a DSLR as apposed to a standard camcorder is proper focusing.  The screens are just not quite big enough or high enough resolution for proper focusing, and most DSLR's don't have a proper continuous autofocus during video (except for the Sony SLT's). This combined with the razor thin depth of field SLR lenses can accomplish, and you have a problem.

There are many solutions, some cheaper than others, but I have yet to see anything as awesome as this (or as cheap).

Meet the DSLR Controller app for Android.  This app allows you to connect your android device directly to your Canon EOS DSLR, and gives you a multitude of features.  For starters, your android device becomes a live view monitor for your camera.  Depending on the resolution and size or your phone or tablet, this can be fantastic, and aid significantly in focusing.

Another feature the DSLR Controller app boasts is tap to focus.  Personally I don't think this would be that helpful, since the autofocus on Canon DSLR's while the mirror is flipped up (it's in live view) is terribly slow.  One of the features that is apparently being worked on however, is the ability to set focus points that you can jump to.  This could be a huge deal as it could be used as a follow focus that's detached from the camera.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet as I have to order the proper cable to connect my phone to the camera (mini usb to micro usb).  There are all sorts of other features already implemented, or currently being worked on.  The app is currently labeled as beta, so it probably still has some kinks to be worked out.  But you can't beat the current price, and the developer says you'll be able to upgrade for free once it moves out of beta.

If I can get this working with my phone (which is technically on the supported devices list) then I'll post a review once I get the cable in.  Until then check out this video demonstrating some of the features, and then hit up the source link to try it yourself.

UPDATE:  It looks like my phone won't work.  Or at least I'm not willing to go through the trouble to make it work.  Turns out, your phone must support USB Host mode (OTG mode) so that you can plug usb devices into it using a USB host cable.  While there are some kernels for my phone that support this (and I'm fairly comfortable loading them), they currently require an outside power source to make it work, which kind of kills the appeal.  

This does make getting a Nook Color more appealing though, as it's officially supported on the DSLR Controller website, and it's pretty much the cheapest android tablet available right now.

Source : dslrcontroller.com  : direct link to market 

Photography for Beginners

Everybody is a photographer these days.  The digital age has made capturing images incredibly easy, and sharing them even easier.  More and more people are now becoming interested in capturing higher quality pictures, so I've put together a little guide to the basics of photography.

Depending on your camera you may not have the option to control all of these settings, but even most of the cheap point and shoot cameras I've come across have had at least some of these controls.

This is going to be very basic.  I'm not going to explain why this works, I'm just going to give a simple cause and effect for each setting.  Click on any of the images to expand them so you can see what I'm talking about better.

Shutter Speed - Measured in Seconds, ie. 1/25

Bigger Number - More light, More blur

Small Number - Darker, Less blur

On a tripod, a long shutter speed can allow much more
light than even the naked eye can detect.

If your shooting handheld or a scene with a lot of movement, you will probably want shutter speed to be set to a lower number (remember this is a fraction, so the denominator is actually higher).  If you have a tripod you can get away with a longer shutter speed to capture more light.

Apature - Measured in F-Stops, ie. f3.5

Bigger Number - Less light, Bigger Depth of Field (More is in focus)

Smaller Number - More light, Shallower Depth of Field (Less is in focus)

Notice the thin line of carpet that is in focus.
This is the result of a very narrow depth of field.

The Apature is one of those things you probably don't have a lot of control of if you have a cheap point and shoot, but there are still many consumer cameras that have a least some control over Apature.  

If you can set your Apature to something like f2.8 or below, you can usually get a really shallow depth of field.  This means that only a very narrow area of your image is actually in focus, which gives you those nice really blurred out backgrounds.  The obvious disadvantage is that it's harder to get your image in focus.

ISO - Measure in hundreds, ie. 200

There is a lot of noise visible in the dark blue sky in
the upper left hand corner

Bigger Number - Brighter, Noisier image

Smaller Number - Darker, Less noisy image

ISO is simply the sensitivity of the sensor.  The higher the ISO, the more sensitive to light the sensor is, but also the more junk you will see in your image.  Some cameras can handle higher ISO values than others, so this one requires a little experimenting to figure out.

So there you have it.  Hopefully this makes sense to everybody.  If something I said doesn't make since,  or is glaringly incorrect leave a comment and I'll fix it before the lies spread.

Mac OS X Tips and Tricks (Getting Started with OS X)

Alright, so one of my good friends from college recently switched from his old Windows XP laptop to a new Macbook.  I told him I'd make a little list of helpful apps and tricks I've found in my couple years of OS X experience, and I figured I might as well post that here.

Because my list got kinda long for one post, I'm going to split it up into two.  The first will go over getting started with the switch to OS X.  This will cover things that are already built into the Mac operating system out of the box.  The second will go through a list of applications I've found to be extremely helpful over the years.

Now keep in mind, I haven't switched over to the newest release of the OS called Lion, so some of these tricks may not work exactly the same way.  Alright, lets get on with it.

What's different


One of the first things people notice when using a Mac for the first time is that the "X" button is on the top left corner instead of the top right corner.

While this difference is only cosmetic, the functionality of the 3 buttons are different than their windows counterparts.  For starters the red "X" button does not close your program.  This is one of those things that really throws people off.  The red "X" button only closes your window, not the application itself.  To close the application you can click the application name in your toolbar and then click "Quit" or use the shortcut command Q.

The green maximize button is also confusing to people.  Instead of going full screen like Windows, OS X maximizes to the applications highest usable resolution.  Sometimes that is the entire screen, and other times, such as web browsers, it's not.

There are applications that can convert these buttons to behave similar to the Windows counterpart, but honestly I don't even use them very often.  I almost always use the command Q shortcut to close programs, and I use an awesome application for my window management that I'll explain in more detail in my next post.

Dock

Another big difference between OS X and Windows is the dock vs the start bar.  The dock doesn't really show you a list of programs that are open, as much as it shows you a list of commonly used programs.  I won't really go into detail because most of it's pretty obvious, but I will show you what settings I use, and you can decide for yourself.

You can get to these settings by clicking the apple logo in the top left of your screen and highlighting Dock and then clicking Dock Preferences

Personally, I can't stand having the dock not automatically hide.  The dock in OS X takes up to much screen real estate for me to not have it on my screen all of the time.

Active Screen Corners

One of my personal favorite features of OS X is called Active Screen Corners.  This allows you to assign commands to each of the corners of your monitor that are activated whenever you put your mouse in that corner.  You can set a corner to make all of your open windows visible at once in smaller form, and you can click on the one you want.

All of these settings are available by going to your System Preferences and clicking Expose & Spaces.

Spaces

Spaces is an awesome feature that I used to use all of the time, but have kind of fallen out of practice with.  It essentially allows you to have multiple "desktops" that you can quickly switch between.  Personally expose eliminated the need for spaces for me, but I encourage you to try it out for yourself and see what you think.

Trackpad

Let me just start by saying I believe that the multitouch trackpad on my macbook pro (which is admittedly a little old) is the absolute best feature that I can't get on a Windows machine (that I know of).    I'll go into this a little deeper in my next post whenever I talk about BetterTouchTool, but the things you can do with the trackpad are amazing.  

For this post I'll just say that I would enable the three finger swipe to navigate.  This allows you to swipe instead of hitting the back button in your browser, and it's absolutely amazing.

Leftovers

I guess I'll end this post with a few little extra tips that I've found to be pretty helpful.

• Hold option + shift for more incremental controls on volume and brightness. (I've heard this doesn't work right now in Lion.  Hopefully they'll fix that soon.)

• Hold command and hit shift.  This brings up spotlight, which essentially lets you search the entire computer for anything.  This is great for opening up applications quickly, or finding and opening a file that you can't remember where you put.

• One thing I missed about windows is the programs list in the start bar.  Sure you could open up finder and click applications on the left, but I wanted something on my dock that let me look at all of my applications.  So I utilized a feature in OS X called stacks.  Just drag your applications folder into your dock.  Now when you click on it is should pop up with a list of all of your applications.  If you right click on the stack you can set a couple of options that give you different layouts.

This is a stack with the grid view.

So this is just scratching the surface of what OS X has to offer, but it pretty much sums up what features I regularly use that have really helped me be more productive.  My next post will go into a couple of the applications I've downloaded that make the Mac experience even better.  Hopefully I'll get that post up sometime in the next couple of days.

Lake Norfork 2011

Check out the video from our annual summer trip to Lake Norfork in Arkansas.  I took out the Casio high speed camera and got some pretty cool slow motion footage of some crashes.

New Name, New Blog, New Chapter In My Life

It's been a while since I last posted here.  In my last post I said I would write a review of my CR-48 Chromebook within two weeks.  That was March 7.  It is already August, and a lot has happened in the last 5 months.  I am now a graduate of Southwest Baptist University,  I got a job as a programmer analyst at a company in St. Louis called Gateway EDI, I'm coming up on 2 months married, and I've moved into a new apartment.

All of these changes mark a very distinct new chapter in my life.  I think it's only appropriate that my blog changes as well.  In trying to come up with a name, I thought about what I want this blog to be.  For some, a blog is like a public journal where they talk about what they do in their day to day lives.  For others it's a way to communicate new fresh ideas to a community that is interested in the same things they are.  As I am neither a middle school girl nor a very smart person, neither of these approaches are very useful.

After giving it some thought (the little that I have), I've decided to use this blog to document my ongoing stumbling through life.  Dictionary.com defines the word stumble with this: to discover or meet with accidentally or unexpectedly.  This blog will be a great place for me to share all the random things I've stumbled across on the internet, or just life in general.

Hopefully, I can muster up the motivation to post here regularly.  The only hope I have is that my wife (yes, somebody married me) is soon going to get tired of my constant ramblings about how IE6 is far more damaging to the country than any debt ceiling, and my constant drooling over every new thing Google comes up with.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll give her a break and write it down in this blog to be read by somebody who accidentally ends up here on a bad Google search.