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Category Archives: Random Thoughts
Nokia N93 – 3.2 megapixel camera phone with optical zoom
I like to have a decent camera phone for all the occasions where I want to take a snap but either can’t or won’t have my DSLR with me. You know, friends doing something stupid, daughter doing something cute, in lieu of a postcard to the folks, that kind of thing. Right now I own the 2mp Sony Ericsson k750i, this Nokia looks like a candidate for an upgrade …
Nokia N93 gets put through its paces – Engadget
3.2 megapixel camera with optical zoom, WiFi, miniSD slot, and QVGA display, Nokia’s N93 dual-pivot clamshell pretty much does it all — at the cost of some considerable bulk, that is
With phones with better camera capabilities than many pocket cameras on the market why is there even that segment still in existence? I can’t see it lasting that long now. MP3 players will be next on the list to go. They do not talk about the lens and such, would be something I might try out before making a purchase. 3mp and optical zoom means squat if my 2mp results are nicer to look at.
Technorati Tags: megapixel, camera, phone, photography, news
Photography Makes You Happier Than Chocolate, Music, TV, Wine
According to research by the open university on behalf of Orange, looking through photographs is more effective at relaxing us than troughing on chocolate or swigging bottles of wine.
Getting Snappy Makes You Happy
Looking through photo albums makes you happier than chocolate, music, TV or even your favourite tipple, according to research revealed today by Orange.
The results show that the mood of those viewing photographs was consistently lifted by 11% during mood measuring tests whilst the groups who tried to eat, listen, watch, or drink their way to happiness registered a mere 1% increase.
The study, carried out for Orange by Peter Naish, Doctor of Psychology at The Open University compared the moods of people using four typical cheer-up treats with those browsing their favourite snaps.
The tests demonstrate that looking through personal photo albums produces an improvement across all measurements including a person’s sense of relaxation, brightness, calmness and alertness and even their sense of being valued and popular – resulting in a higher happiness score overall.
In contrast, the pick-me-ups people commonly rely on were only successful in helping them relax: Wine by 14%, chocolate by 8%. Photo albums were proven to be a far more effective way of unwinding, with subjects recording an average relaxation score of 22% – substantially higher. So before reaching for the bottle after a hard day consider that apart from relaxation, wine and chocolate offer little additional benefits. In fact, the wine drinkers actually rated themselves as feeling 6% less satisfied after their drink. Only those that flicked through photographs showed a consistent positive shift across all measures of mood.
This research was released to promote their new photo service so I wouldn’t cancel that therapy appointment just yet, ha, but I do agree with the findings. For a really nice relaxing browse through Flickr I recommend the Slickr Screensaver.
In fact as well as looking through photographs I find taking them quite relaxing too. Well, when things are going well, heh.
Red Eye gives away your age.
If you’re like me you’d have thought that red eye is a problem, not something that you would want to have in your photo. Well it turns out that some smart fella has found a use for it, to tell your age. Yep your age.
Red eye is caused by the light being bounced off the blood vessels at the back of the eye. There are red-eye prevention techniques that have a pre-photo flash to get the iris to constrict and reduce the red-eye effect. It turns out though as you get older the muscles that constrict the iris are weaker and don’t do as good job. So basically the more red-eye that appears, the older you are. Its probably not that simple in practice, read more about it here at the Discovery website.
For me I still think I will continue to try to get rid of it!
Deleteme Duped
This is pretty funny, Cartier-Bresson Booted from Flickr
Here is a real life example of the kind of criticism Mike is mocking here. The “deleteme” group on Flickr is just that—people make comments and vote to keep or delete a picture from the group pool. This lends itself to art by committee, with hilarious results such as Mario’s Bike on Flickr.
Henri Cartier-Bresson might be many a photographer’s hero but he certainly didn’t get any breaks from the Flickr Deleteme group.
Humour value aside though I think it raises an interesting point, why should a famous artist be given any special treatment over a nobody? Everyone is allowed their opinion even if that opinion goes against historical or popular opinion. Does a number one mean a song is better than had it not achieved the top 40? Just because a critic tells you to go see a movie does that movie suck any less? Of course the reverse it also true; just because someone else finds something wrong in a work of art does not make it any less art.
My own efforts at criticism are probably no better or worse than those in that thread, although I do lean toward praise rather than negative and lead with how a picture makes me feel rather than an appreciation of technical merit. I don’t see there being any real answers to this. There should be nobody in art above criticism, even if the criticism is of the facile quality of deleteme.
What do you think?
flickr, funny, photography, art
Stereotypes
I envy people who can take a good portrait, I lake the people skills to make people at there ease. Here i stumbled across a nice weird twist on portraits. Have a play its quite fun, pity there aren’t any more.
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FlickrInspector
I just saw on Thomas Hawks blog a neat little tool called flickrInspector. This service analyses your Flickr information and shows various fun things like your most popular images, your favourites etc. Of particular interest for me is it shows that I have passed my one-year anniversary with Flickr, I have been a member 367 days today!
Wow, that means I have had my Canon 350D just over a year, I will have to do a retrospective …