Stuff that fries your potatoes with olive oil of HAPPY.

[Jupi]

The manager of the restaurant my friend Brian works in wants me to come be a cook for them when they extend their hours in January.    I applied a while back, but they didn't have room in the kitchen for weekend staff.  But now that they're going to be open past 3pm, I can work after class!

Whoo!

[『フエハデ』]

So, I was at a friend's dorm room, since he invited me over to play some 007: Nightfire. Somehow, we got into talking about retro games, and he was all 'oh, yeah, Diddy Kong Racing was an amazing game'. I mention I have an N64 and three controllers, and so we end up playing Diddy Kong Racing (and on a rather nice LCD HDTV, at that. Pixels EVERYWHERE).

Not 5 minutes pass before some guy I don't even recognize stops and says 'oh man, do you have Mario Kart? I loved that game!', so we switch games. Not long after, some more people come in, and soon a queue starts with 5 people waiting to play in 3-player matches. By the time my friend and I go to the dining hall to grab some late-night food, they're playing GP with two players.

When we've returned, there's a full group of people playing Mario Party 2, going batshit INSANE over everything that's going on, which is particularly hilarious given that it's 11:30 PM by now and it's supposedly quiet hours. The guy that ended up winning, around 12:30 AM, had 11 stars by the end of the round (more than the other three combined), and a good time was had by all. At one point, we had 8 people in this tiny little dorm room all shouting and hollering and stuff like that.

I love this dorm, and the people in it, and it's some of the most fun I've had, ever.

[Jupi]

Glad you're having fun over there.  ^^

[OmegaOmni]

So I bought I mic head set I am having too much fun with it.

[MortifiedocAlot]

The Thing, Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Sin City are all on scifi back to back.

[Spectere]

My cousin Dave (lol Armegeddon) got married toda...err, yesterday.   I'm so happy for him and his lovely wife.  Really fun party, too.  I didn't drink much because I was the designated driver (had some of da bubbly in the limo, a sip of wine, and a shot of Bacardi rum) but I had a blasty.  Only downside is that my tie was a bit too tight so the skin in the front of my neck is totally red and chaffed.  Ugh.

Also, yay birthday party tomorr...err, today.  One day belated but whatever.

[Jupi]

I got a new flash drive.  :3

And my dad was all "Aw, hell.  I'll buy you a new camera today.  So long as we don't spend one cent over $106.99."

Incidentally, the camera cost $106.98.  So whoo. 

[Bobbias]

I don't think I could stand getting any cheap camera now, lol.

I may not really know much about actually focusing things, and all the real intricate aspects of photography, but I certainly know enough to want a digital SLR, not to mention I hate using those LCD displays (and most cheap cameras now don't even have a viewfinder).

[Spectere]

Even if you had no intention of using the manual modes, one very good reason to get a DSLR is simply the lack of noise.  At the wedding yesterday, my other cousin (Dave's sister) wanted me to snap a picture of her with some of the others in the bridal party.  It was a little Canon Powershot camera, literally the first non-SLR I've used in a while, cell phone camera not included.  The thing was set to ISO 50 and it gave about the same results at that sensitivity that my D40 gives at ISO 400.  Yikes.  Forget about setting that little thing to ISO 400.  The picture was so smeary because of the heavy noise filtering that the mode is basically unusable.

The problem isn't so much the lack of features or anything like that, it's all about sensor size.  Smaller sensors with higher megapixel counts introduce a lot of noise and, therefore, require the photographer to use less sensitive modes (like ISO 50) to get a decent shot.  The higher the megapixel count gets the worse the result is.  My dad's 3 megapixel Sony Cybershot stands up reasonably well against my D40 as far as image quality goes.  It takes damn nice shots for what it is just because Sony didn't go overboard with megapixel count.  It doesn't offer a full manual mode, but it still has the PSA modes that my D40 has, giving you quite a bit of control over the picture.  How many standard digital cameras let you manually focus and set the shutter speed?  Not many.

It kills me when people scoff at my D40 because of its relatively "low" megapixel count.  6 megapixels is more than enough for an 8.5x11 printout (and possibly bigger), plus the picture quality is outstanding.  Those stupid "12 megapixel" compact digital cameras have about the same level of quality as my cell phone camera.  The resulting image only looks passable if you shrink the image down to your average screen size, and even then the colors sometimes get fudged up because the sensor isn't very good.

The only real complaint that I have about my D40 is that the matrix meter is terribly inconsistent.  I constantly have to adjust the exposure level to fit the scene.  It has a tendency of overexposing outdoor daylight shots, which really shouldn't happen.  Depending on how bright sunlight is I have to set the exposure adjustment down by an entire stop to compensate.  My F4, designed and manufactured starting in 1988, is perfectly fine.  Funny how that works.

[Jupi]

Eh, I'm just happy I've got a camera that I can carry about with me.  My AE-1, while I quite like it, is a real pain in the arse to carry around.

[Spectere]

Different strokes (giggity) for different folks, as they say.

Really, with the compact digital cameras you're fine as long as you don't get any of those ones with ridiculous megapixel counts.  With the small sensors that they use, too much is definitely a bad thing.

[Jupi]

Define ridiculous megapixel count.  Haha.

[Bobbias]

It kills me when people scoff at my D40 because of its relatively "low" megapixel count.  6 megapixels is more than enough for an 8.5x11 printout (and possibly bigger), plus the picture quality is outstanding.  Those stupid "12 megapixel" compact digital cameras have about the same level of quality as my cell phone camera.  The resulting image only looks passable if you shrink the image down to your average screen size, and even then the colors sometimes get fudged up because the sensor isn't very good.

I should point out that my mom uses a 12 MP digital camera and actually gets some decent looking shots form it. She uses it for exterior shots of the houses she's listing, and they come out looking pretty nice, considering she has 0 photography skill/knowledge. Of course, for the sake of making things easier on myself when I need to send pictures to my dad or any time I have to deal with them really, I set it to use 6 MP anyway, since that is still MAJOR overkill. She has to resize all her images to 640x480 in the end anyway :/

[Spectere]

Define ridiculous megapixel count.  Haha.

Basically, greater than is practical for the sensor size employed.  It depends on the camera, but generally having 12 megapixels in a sensor smaller than the APS-sized sensor that's in a DSLR is too much.  The Canon Rebel XTi and Nikon D40x -- both 12 megapixel DSLRs -- need to be bumped down to ISO 100 to get the similar results as my 6 megapixel D40 does with ISO 200.  Basically, they'd need more light to get the same level of noise that mine gets on a more sensitive mode.

The fact that cameras with sensors half the size (or smaller!) than those DSLRs are pushing the same megapixel counts, you're definitely going to notice a loss in picture quality.

I should point out that my mom uses a 12 MP digital camera and actually gets some decent looking shots form it. She uses it for exterior shots of the houses she's listing

This is why.  As long as the camera is in a well-lit area, the shutter can stay open long enough for handheld operation at a low ISO speed (usually 50 for those kind of cameras).  That, plus the built-in noise filtering prevents you from seeing a whole lot of noise.

Even in light areas those cameras tend to require shutter speeds as long as 1/125 or 1/60 to get decent results even with bright light due to the slow ISO speeds.  In contrast, 1/2000 is sometimes too slow at ISO 200 for my D40 when the lens is fully open.

[Jupi]

Soo...34.53 megapixels on a cellphone camera...Ridic or redonk?