Respect The Walmart Photo Police Authority

By Eric

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. If you are a somewhat competent photographer make sure you sign a release letter before attempting to make prints at Walmart. I took this very basic photo of my niece for her dance recital program. I then gave the photo to my parents on a thumb drive because they wanted a print of it. To Walmart they went. All was well until they tried to check out. Then the Walmart photo police refused to give them the print. Furthermore, instead of politely telling them that the photo looked professionally made and asking them to procure a signed letter of release they accused my parents of trying to steal the photo and make illegal prints of copyrighted material. After harassing my parents for 10 minutes about it my father said to just cut up the photo, he no longer wanted it. Instead of doing that the manager of the Walmart photo center then calls me personally and asks me how I took the photo. Then asks me if I can fax them a release on my letterhead. After explaining to them that I am not a professional photographer, nor do I have stationary, and that I took that photo in my parents living room with a white quilt and two strobes they finally begrudgingly gave in and let my parents have the print.

Long story short, carry a copy of this photo release form with you whenever making prints at Walmart.

The Handwriting Is On The Wall For DSLR’s

By Eric

I finally got my hands on a Panasonic G1 today. I didn’t get to test it for long, but 20 minutes with it was long enough to confirm my belief that Micro Four Thirds style cameras are the future of the amateur photography market. This is by no means a detailed review, there are plenty of sites that do that. I’m just going to point out some of the things I liked about it and speculate on the future of the system. 

What I Liked

The first thing I noticed when framing up a photo was the size of the electronic view finder. Compared to a cropped sensor DSLR, such as a Canon Rebel, it is a HUGE view. It easily seems as large as the view in a full frame DSLR even though the camera itself is much smaller than a Nikon D60. Plus there is so much info in the view finder for you at all times. Traditional SLR’s can’t compete in this area for obvious reasons. After taking a photo you don’t even have to take your eye out of the viewfinder to see a review of it. And what an image review it is, better than any LCD I’ve seen on any SLR. It feels almost like reviewing your image on a 20″ monitor. If you’re used to seeing your images on a 2.5″ LCD or smaller then you’re in for a real treat. Read more »

Why Am I Here?

By Eric

I’m sitting here watching the wrap-up of Obama’s inauguration, but for some reason I’m once again thinking about space and time. Why am I here right now? The universe is over 13 billion years old. The chance of me being alive during any natural era of human history on earth is so small that I can’t wrap my brain around it. It makes more sense to me to believe that I was really born billions of years ago and this current reality is nothing but a simulation of a normal human life at the zenith of our natural evolution. The real me is simply sitting somewhere in a galaxy far, far away plugged in to a simulator living out a normal life to pass time.

I am 31 years old. That means I am a member of the last generation to spend their entire adolescence in a pre-internet world. 31 years from now we will have designer babies, cloned organs, and regenerative medicine. Beyond that we will have robotic bodies that in-theory will have unlimited lifespans. Beyond that we should be able to develop a way to transcend our physical bodies all together and upload our consciousness to a secure location. From that location we could choose to live out virtual lives any time, any way, and during any era we choose. All of that should take no longer that 300 years, and some such as Ray Kurzweil feel as though it will take much less time than that. Long story short, this era of human history has had to of already happened.

Of course this is probably just my feeling of self importance getting the better of me. The Obama’s of the world are the real humans; you and I are just neural net bots programmed to fill that simulated world for them. Sleep tight.

Why Won’t Manufactures Make A Real Pocket Camera?

By Eric

I just read on 1001 Noisy Cameras that Olympus is announcing 10 cameras at CES this year and so far every single one has a 1/2.3 sensor. For people that don’t know what 1/2.3 means, imagine a child’s pinky nail. Now imagine an image sensor that size. Now think back to 35mm slides and compare the two. I’m not saying pocket cameras need 35mm slide film size sensors, but why will no one other than Sigma even attempt to put an APS-C or Four Thirds size sensor into  pocket camera?  There is no need to even review these new camera’s to know what the results will be. They will all be unusable over ISO200 and not a single one of them will allow you to have shallow depth of field (blurry background) unless you’re focusing on an object 10″ from the tip of the lens.

Is it really too much to ask to make 1 camera for photographers (and wanna be photographers like myself) and 9 for everyone else? Throw us a bone please.

[Via 1001 Noisy Cameras]

Best Flickr Photostream Ever?

By Eric

Somehow Andrew Kuznetsov came across one of my photos in my Flickr gallery and was kind enough to leave a comment, so I clicked on his name to check his photos out and all I can say is holy shit! I’m actually embrassed to even put my photos in the same public space with him. I have much to learn. Check it out for yourself: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-cavin-/