Marie Brennan's Blog, page 144

A Year in Pictures – Etched Window

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If I needed evidence that proper cameras still have the edge over cameraphones, this provides it. I tried to take a photo of this window (in the Okinawan Prefectural Budokan) with my phone, and it came out useless, with the etching totally washed out. When I came back the next day with my actual camera, though, I could control the settings enough that it came out beautifully.

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Yuletide is a-comin' in . . . .

I meant to post this sooner, and now it’s very nearly too late, since nominations close in about fifteen hours. But Yuletide nominations are open!

If you don’t know what that is, I’ll recap what I said last year:

Yuletide is a fanfiction gift exchange for “rare fandoms” — meaning not your Harry Potters and so on, but things that don’t normally get a lot of fannish activity. This means stories for obscure ’80s movies, book series you loved when you were nine (whenever that was for you), indie comics, songs, paintings, historical personages, bizarre TV commercials, Appalachian murder ballads, London museums, and Plato’s Dialogues, along with many, many other things.

Participating means that you sign up with requests and offers: things you would like somebody else to write for you, and things you’d be willing to write for somebody else. Offers get matched to requests, everybody gets an assignment, and you go off to write a complete story of at least one thousand words, featuring the characters your recipient asked for. Come Christmas morning (ish, depending on your time zone), you get to read the story your assigned writer wrote for you. And much fun is had.

I wasn’t making up that list, either: all of those things were nominated last year. Nominations matter because those create the list of things people can offer or request, so if there’s something you want to see in Yuletide, you have until 6 p.m. UTC tomorrow to make your wishes known. Here are the guidelines for what can be nominated. You do need an AO3 account to participate, but if you don’t have one, let me know and I’ll send you an invite code.

It really is a lot of fun. Yuletide is full of people going “oh my god, I’m not the only person who loves this!” (In fact, that’s kind of the point.) This is my fifth year participating, and it’s become sort of my annual treat to myself, writing some stuff just because it’s entertaining to do so, not because it’s my job. Plus it’s a lot more communal and social than writing generally is. If that sounds like your cup of tea, give it a shot!

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A Year in Pictures – Zakopane Church

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It took some fiddling in Lightroom to get this photo to reflect what I saw; the initial result left the leaves above so thoroughly silhouetted that their color didn’t come through at all. The framing pleased me, though, with the evergreens on the sides and the changing leaves fringing the top.

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A Year in Pictures – Flower-Decked Fountain

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This is another scanned print, from my first trip to Japan back in 2002. The fountain stands in the temple of Hounen-in; I don’t know whether it was a monk who decided to decorate it with fallen flowers or just an idle passer-by, but either way the effect was beautiful.

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A Year in Pictures – Under the Bridge

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Golden Gate Bridge is far from the longest in the world. But when you’re looking at it from underneath, seeing the huge length of its span hanging from two simple towers . . . it’s quite impressive.

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A Year in Pictures – Silhouetted Church

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After visiting the neighboring island of Delos (birthplace of Apollo and Artemis), we had a short time on Mykonos, where the churches are plastered featureless white. So the silhouette effect, where the details of the object mostly vanish? Works very well here.

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A Year in Pictures – Windsor Colors

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We didn’t have very long at Windsor Castle, because it was one of those day tours where if you aren’t on the bus by the appointed time, they’re leaving you behind. It was long enough, though, to catch a nice view of the autumn colors, and the flag dancing in the wind.

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A Year in Pictures – Shrine Tassel

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This is just a little detail shot from the Okinawan-ken Gokoku Jinja. I love the textiles I see at places like this, the ribbons and tassels and cords, and the flowers printed on the curtains.

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Camera Hunting

Warning: camera neepery ahead. Or, depending on your temperament: yay, camera neepery ahead!

I’m looking to replace my Leica V-Lux 2, which is a hand-me-down from my mother, ergo more than a few years old. Searching for a replacement has been educational, because it’s illustrating for me the extent to which the niche occupied by this model appears to be, well, disappearing.

There are DSLRs. There are point-and-shoot cameras. What there doesn’t appear to be is a point-and-shoot with specs that are equal to or better than what I have right now. Nikon’s Coolpix line is right out; they don’t seem to have any model with an aperture range bigger than f/3 to f/6.5. (My Leica goes f/2.8 to f/8.) The Leica website still lists the V-Lux 4, but given that I can’t seem to find it for sale anywhere, I have a sneaking suspicion it’s been discontinued. My best bet so far is Canon’s PowerShot G1 X Mark II . . . but, and I admit this is a trivial concern, its LCD is embedded in the back of the camera. My Leica has the screen on a swivel arm, which has come massively in handy when I’m trying to take photos at weird angles, like from over my head or around a corner.

The Nikon D5200 has the swivel screen — but it’s a DSLR. (Or, to be more precise, it’s a system camera/ILC.) I’ve kind of wanted to move to interchangeable lenses for years now, so I should leap at the prospect, right? Well, not quite. Because that means carrying lenses with me, and I’m not keen to have the added weight, given how many of my trips involve being on my feet all day. Not to mention that switching out lenses will slow me down, and my husband is already wonderfully tolerant for putting up with the amount of time I spend taking photos. (Not to mention carrying our backpack part of the time, so he’d be dealing with the added weight, too.) I’ve worked hard on being as quick as I can, but swapping out for a wide-angle lens or whatever is going to inevitably take time.

Sure, I could get the Nikon and then just never buy any other lenses. But at that point it seems stupid to have a system camera in the first place.

Except that I’m not sure I can get what I want otherwise. The Canon comes closest, if I’m willing to give up the swivel screen; it’s gotten some excellent reviews. But the point-and-shoot market is being cannibalized by smartphones: they may not be as good at taking photos as a dedicated camera, but for most people’s purposes they’re good enough, and much more convenient. If you actually care about the finer points of photography, it seems like you’re increasingly looking at the higher end of the market, just because of the way the lower end is vanishing.

All of which is extended background leading up to a question: is there another camera I should consider? The swivel screen is negotiable, but I definitely need f/2.8-f/8 or better, decent zoom, and ISO up to 1600 (bonus points if the levels above 400 are actually usable). Right now it’s a race between the Canon Powershot G1 X Mark II and the Nikon D5200, but I’d love to know if there are any alternatives.

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A Year in Pictures – My Husband at Dusk

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A while back we were at Point Lobos late in the day, and the light and atmospheric conditions combined to form what the internet tells me is called “altocumulus stratiformis perlucidus” clouds — yeah, no, that isn’t a term I’ll be in the habit of using any time soon.

The fellow you see on the path there is my very own husband. ^_^

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