The Canon T2I: Megapixel Overkill

You may remember my post from a while back, Let’s Talk Megapixels. In this post, I talked about what megapixels actually are and how they affect your images. Well, Canon has upped the ante in the war of the megapixels with the upcoming Digital Rebel T2i, weighing in at a whopping 18 megapixel sensor. Granted, the T2i has a lot of other nice features, including the ability to capture video. But 18 megapixels in a consumer-grade camera is a little absurd if you ask me. Like I’ve said before, the mindset of “more megapixels automatically means a better camera” is seriously flawed.

I’m not sure why a person buying a consumer-grade DSLR would need something that can produce billboard-sized images. The only people really benefiting from the continuous increase in megapixels are the folks in the digital storage industry, since these images quickly eat up hard drive space. Instead of trying to constantly increase the megapixel count, I wish camera manufacturers would focus on more performance-related features, such as improved low-light capabilities (as this article from Gizmodo suggests), noise/dust reduction, focusing, frame rate and expanding on video capture abilities (since this seems to be the apparent future of DSLRs).

Google Wave a Wipeout?

Well, it has been about four months since Google started sending out invitations to try out their newest communication platform, Google Wave. Google created a huge demand by releasing this motion picture length demo before Wave was released. I fully expected Wave to be a game-changing tool (and it still may be), but as of yet, it does not seem like people are adopting the technology very well. After sitting back and thinking about it, here are my opinions on why Google Wave has not caught on:

1. Exclusivity – I fully understand why companies like Google build a user base using “by-invitation-only” release. It allows them to scale up the load the software places on their servers by not having everyone sign up at once and also gives them a chance to make bug fixes before too many people are involved. This strategy worked great with services like Gmail and Google Voice, but it seems to have hindered Google Wave. Why? Well, with Voice and Gmail there are alternatives that could be used while users wait on invitations to the new service. With Wave, it was like a user gets an invitation…and now what? If their contacts were not also already Wave users, it seemed pretty pointless to use the service. This is the biggest hindrance to Wave, in my opinion, and could change as more and more people begin to sign up.
2. Slow – Google Wave has also been slow as Christmas to use…at least for me. Performance improvements would definitely make Wave a more attractive communications and collaboration platform.
3. Another inbox to bring to zero – Honestly, people already have enough services and websites to check and get their unread counts to zero. What I think might be nice for Wave moving forward is for the functionality to be integrated into part of Gmail and the stand-alone Wave site to be phased out.

If you haven’t had the chance to surf Google Wave, leave me a comment and I will hook you up – I still have plenty of invitations to give out.

Plans for 2010

We won’t call these “resolutions” for the upcoming new year, but here are some things that I would like to personally strive towards in 2010:

• An improved and consistent web presence: Do you ever have something that you feel just isn’t quite the way you want it to be? That’s where I’m currently at with my presence online. Included here are another round of website upgrades, hopefully in the first part of the year, that will improve the functionality and look of this site. Also, I would like to rejuvenate the blog – to post more in-depth and thought-out entries instead of using this as just a place to share links (we have Twitter for that, right?). I’ve been posting online in some way or another for 6+ years now, but I’d like to tie it all together now and make everything consistent. I plan on getting more involved with online conversations and not just be an observer/reader.
• Shoot more: I’m sure I’m not alone on this one. I’m really excited to already have several shoots lined up for the coming year. I would also like to continue to get out and shoot anything and everything – always learning, always meeting new people and trying new things, always getting better.
• Put ideas into action: I have a couple of personal/side projects that I have been thinking about for a while now. I’d like to get some of these rolling this year.

What about you? Do you have any plans or goals for 2010?

Caleb

Caleb was born November 30th, shortly after midnight. Aside from some sleep deprivation, everyone is doing well.

VBS Set Design

This is the background set design that we put together for our Vacation Bible School last week at Lifepoint. I hadn’t ever worked on putting together something like this before and it was a lot of work – but it was also a lot of fun.

It’s amazing what you can do with some cardboard, duct tape, foam and paint. We were actually able to find a lot of materials lying around, or donated from someone that was about to throw it away. The backdrop was assembled from three pieces of foam, with the shack built out of a fourth piece. Although we all pitched in here and there on the backdrop, most of the painting was delegated to Ben. The boat was constructed from an empty grill box. The dock is a piece of staging with cardboard on top and the railing is made from two long cardboard tubes cut into sections. We laid down green cellophane for the water and the plants were already part of the church decor.

Overall, we put this together for less than $100, with the only expenses being the cellophane, the foam, the Spanish moss  and the paint.

Amen Corner Groom’s Cake

I got an email a few weeks ago from a gentleman in Georgia, wanting to use my shot of Amen Corner at Augusta National on his future son-in-law’s groom cake. I told him to go ahead, on the condition that he sent me a picture of the finished product.

The wedding was this past weekend and from what he told me, the cake was a big hit at the rehearsal dinner. I can honestly say that this is the first request I’ve received to use one of my images on a cake. Pretty cool if you ask me. Here’s the picture he sent me of the cake:

March Snow

A couple of shots from around the house in the snow. We got about five to six inches, which is a lot for around here. The second shot was the day after the snow had fallen, so it isn’t a true representation of how much we really got. I had never seen lightning during a snow before (not like I’ve really seen a lot of snow either, but that’s beside the point), so that was cool to watch.

After all of this, it’s supposed to be in the 70’s this weekend. That’s just fine with me.

Tanner Smith

Great article on ESPN about Tanner Smith, Freshman Guard/Forward for the Clemson basketball team, and his off-the-court heroics to cheer up teens and pre-teens with cancer.

Direct link to Smith’s charity Tanner’s Totes.

Not So Fast

The Spring-like weather didn’t last long enough for me. After a week of highs in the low seventies, I went outside this morning to find my car frozen over. I’m guessing that was enough to kill off any of the blooms from the trees/flowers that had emerged (like the one in our backyard, pictured above).

Let’s talk Megapixels

Here’s a topic I’ve been asked about a good bit recently, so I thought it would be a good idea to briefly address what this mysterious megapixel is and how it effects your pictures. Digital images are made up tiny squares pieced together, called pixels. Literally, a megapixel is equivalent to one million pixels. So naturally, the more megapixels your camera has, the higher the quality of your image (this is called resolution).

Now, you’re probably thinking that all of this technical mumbo jumbo is great and all, but how does it effect me and how many megapixels does my camera need? Well, it depends on how you want to use your images. If you’re only planning on storing and viewing your pictures on a computer screen, then you won’t need a camera with as many megapixels as someone that wanted to blow up their images poster-sized.

There is a great chart over at digicamhelp.com that shows you the minimum megapixel count to get a certain print size. Here’s another similar chart for those that are a little more technically savvy. So if you’re never going to print anything larger than an 8″ x 10″, you don’t necessarily need a 10 megapixel camera. Another thing to consider is that the higher the megapixel count, the larger the images will be when you download them to your computer (and the more hard drive space the images are going to take up).

So, in short, don’t get glossy eyed when the sales person pitches you a 25 megapixel camera swearing that it’s the biggest, best and it’s exactly what you ought to have. Choose a camera that has a megapixel count that will suit your needs.

Some further reading:

• Digicamhelp: What is a megapixel?
• Breaking the Myth of Megapixels
  
• Pixels, on Wikipedia
• Why the Megapixel Race Needs to End