Beautiful Release

In which I search for a way to bring new life to my favorite pen: http://disavian.no-ip.info/lamenta3/2009/01/pen-wanted/

In which I finally break down and send my nearly 10-year-old Jansport backpack in for repairs... http://disavian.no-ip.info/lamenta3/2009/01/the-journey-of-my-beloved-backpack/

CNN Political Forum badge

So I just signed up for The Forum at CNN.com, made my badge, and realized that "leaning left" and "leaning right" have more to do with the respective parties' positions rather than their traditional meanings. On Homeland Security, it seems that this disconnect was the most stark: I am shown as "leaning left," when my reasoning behind opposing the PATRIOT Act, a border fence and warrantless wiretapping stems from strong beliefs in civil libertarianism (with a small 'L,' not to be confused with the Libertarian Party) and fiscal conservatism. The disconnect is also pretty strong on the issue of the economy, as I oppose the Bush tax cuts on the grounds that they are fiscally irresponsible given the government's expenditures.

I am a registered independent much for these reasons--I was raised in a very Republican family, but the Republican Party no longer holds the positions of traditional conservatism in government that I was raised to respect. The Democratic Party now seems to take the positions that uphold many traditionally conservative ideals, however I still disagree with the Democrats on some of the philosophy upon which some of those positions are based. This is just a matter of a difference of means to achieve the same end, though, hence why I can support Obama, not just as a 'lesser of two evils,' but as someone who has a long-term vision for America that is actually in line with my values.

Obama 1

This is our moment; this is our time.

I'm excited. His victory speech was very moving and very gracious. Can't say so much for Hillary Clinton's speech, which all but sealed my suspicions of her narcissistic personality disorder.

But back to Obama...I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that any speech, let alone a politician's speech, has nearly moved me to tears. Or maybe I was just so happy to be able to open my bottle of champagne, which was waiting for him to acknowledge his victory.

So yeah...on to Denver, and then...the White House!

(The picture at the right was taken by me at an Obama campaign rally in Atlanta in April 2007.)

So I'm sitting here watching the returns from the Puerto Rico Democratic primary, just like I was watching the DNC rules committee yesterday decide what to do about Michigan and Florida. Now, I realize that if you go by the rules and the numbers, that it is more or less impossible for Hillary Clinton to get the nomination. However, her supporters it seems will stop at nothing, including a floor fight at the convention, to get it for her, and she all but outright encourages their despicable and divisive behavior. Just watch the DNC rules committee proceedings from yesterday; it's disgusting. But that's not what this entry is about, I just find it necessary to indict them for their behavior before I get to the point.

The point? Let's just play with the unlikely hypothetical that Hillary Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and it doesn't destroy the party such that McCain wins. Right now, either Democratic candidate leads McCain in the polls, so maybe it's not a total long shot there. So let's just say for the moment that Hillary Clinton becomes president. That would make the presidents in my lifetime go as follows:

So I'm looking at buying a DSLR, and I'm balancing price/value with capability and quality to come out with the best camera for my needs. I've only rarely worked with professional- and expert-grade cameras, usually just tinkering with ones belonging to the photographers that I work with. Pretty much all of the photography that I've ever done, either for personal use or for-hire has been shot with a point-and-shoot of some sort. I pretty much converted over from shooting a combination of film and digital to just shooting digital about four years ago, and if there's one thing I really miss about shooting in film is that, even with a one-time use camera, you can get crispness and color depth that you can't achieve with a pretty reasonable point-and-shoot digital camera.

So anyway...perhaps my biggest pet peeve about shooting in digital with just about any point-and-shoot that I've laid hands on is the color noise that becomes evident if the photo isn't taken under the most ideal conditions. And the worse a camera performs under low-light conditions, the worse this problem seems to be overall. Therefore, my old Sony point-and-shoot digital camera is a much bigger culprit than my boyfriend's Canon point-and-shoot of comparable specs. As a result, I find myself stealing his camera to take pictures more often than not. A close second pet peeve is the harsh shadowing and reflections that result from using a non-sensitive, barely adjustable flash. Most point-and-shoots don't have any way to hook up a flash kit, and the positioning of the built-in flash is not conducive to using a reflector or a diffuser of any sort or quality with much success. Even DSLRs have this problem with a non-diffused or straight-on flash, but the strange thing is that I never had this problem shooting in film, and I never did anything special with the stock flash.

So, getting to what I mentioned in the headline...Flickr has this neat feature where you can look at photos taken with different cameras. So, I pulled up the pages for all of the cameras that I was considering: Canon 30D, Canon 450D (Rebel XSi), Nikon D80 and Nikon D40. Suffice it to say, beautiful images can be captured with any of these cameras with the right lens, under the right conditions. The more I look at things, the more I realize that lenses can matter a good deal more than the camera body itself. However, I want to know what each camera is capable of, and how well it handles non-ideal lighting and handling with a kit lens. The kit lens for each of the cameras I'm looking at is a 18-50mm lens with image stabilization and/or autofocus capabilities. The cameras differ in megapixels, but that doesn't matter to me as much as how well the camera performs under conditions such as low light with a high ISO and no flash--a recipe for high noise no matter what you're shooting with, and bad lighting conditions (like fluorescent lighting) with flash--often a recipe for harsh shadowing and significant color noise.

I found that looking at recently posted images from each camera provided me with plenty of non-professional, non-ideal snapshots that are really the stress test for the sensor and the optics that I was looking for. From what I saw, the Nikon cameras are prone to more noise and harsh shadowing under non-ideal conditions. The Canon cameras are much more forgiving; low-light shots taken with the 450D at ISO 250, handheld, with no flash were fairly crisp and had no perceptible noise. One taken with the 30D at ISO 1600 and no flash did have some perceptible noise, but even less than what I would get if I took the same picture at ISO 400 with my point-and-shoot Sony, or even my boyfriend's point-and-shoot Canon.

I also looked at some of the more professional and artistic images taken and still found indicators that the Canon cameras are less prone to my biggest digital pet peeves than Nikons. One image, taken with the D80 at 200 mm and ISO 220, had a good bit of noise around the finer details of the image despite very good lighting conditions. Zoom is another thing that can contribute to a noisy picture, so this exemplar makes me question the D80's ability to overcome what I see as one of digital photography's biggest problems. I do like the color depth that the Nikon cameras can seem to capture, though. That is one thing that I would say it does slightly better than the Canons, particularly when taking pictures of people and animals. The D40 seems to be a little less noise-prone than the D80; I'm told this is because of its lower megapixel count, but it seems to suffer greatly from harsh flash-induced shadowing, moreso than any of the other cameras I'm looking at.

So at this point, I think I may be settled on either the Canon 30D or 450D, though I'm leaning a bit more to the 450D at the moment, as it seems to have a few more noob-proofing capabilities for the price which seem like they'll remain useful once I get used to using and maintaining a DSLR. Ideally, I'd like to be able to try both of them out to get a feel for them and see which one seems to respond best to my shooting style and if one feels less awkward then the other to use. I'd also be interested in hearing from someone who has used two or more of the cameras I've been looking at and getting their comparative opinion on the cameras.