A lot of people put up social snapshots onto facebook. This is not a problem, but consider when you're a bit more serious about your photos, and your continued ownership of them.

I appreciate that artists may need a facebook presence, including some photos for purposes of publicity. But you should consider those photos effectively thrown to the wolves - by uploading them, you have given them to facebook, lock stock and barrel. If you have a gallery, consider keeping it elsewhere for safety. Flickr works for me. Link to it from facebook.

Reading the comments here gives a subtle reading of the Home Secretary's statement apparently confirming status quo regarding public photography.

If you are harassed by police or community support officers while taking photographs in public in the UK, you can now say "The home secretary has In July confirmed that while there is no legal restriction on photography in public places, local restrictions might be enforced by a Chief Constable. Has your chief constable specifically set a policy on public photography? (and if not, stop bothering me)"

According to the Home Secretary, it is not up to the officer on the street to decide that you can't take photos, it is up to their Chief's policy.

Futher, a policy of 'entirely at the discretion of the local officer' is not defensible. That would be the equivalent of "don't drive too fast, or you'll be arrested. But the actual speed limit is entirely at the discretion of the local officer deciding whether to arrest you."

I have some reasons why my new camera (Nikon Coolpix P5100, 12 Megapixels) isn't as good as the old one (Nikon Coolpix 5200, 5 Megapixels) bought around 3 years ago.

Pictures are not that much larger. 12 Megapixels is surely much larger than 5? Maybe not.. 5 million pixels on a square sensor is a square 2236 pixels on a side. With 12 Million pixels it’s 3464 pixels a side. 3464 over 2236 is about 1.55. The picture sides are only 1.55 times as long in pixels. So it's one and half times as large in pixels.

The image sensor inside the camera is probably about the same size as before, so the pixels are actually smaller sensors that now work off less light falling on them. This means more guesswork. Which would you rather have for a particular part of the image – 10 pixels with clean colour values, or 15 noisy ones? It's not clear any more that the new camera is an improvement.

It doesn't autofocus as well. Often things are out of focus, or I take longer finding the focus. Macro mode is not quite as good.

( Read more... )