If you frequent Digg, you may have already seen this, but it’s worth sharing in case you missed it.

Most Popular Seansense of 2008

• Post: Sony HDR-SR11 First Impressions Review with 5,706 views.
• Video: Sony HDR-SR11 First Video with 8,940 views on Vimeo.
• Photo: Unknown (I don’t have a good way to track this since I switched galleries mid-year. The most viewed photo in the new gallery is currently Road to the Campsite with 49 views. Weird.)

Most Commented Seansense of 2008

• Post: Sony HDR-SR11 First Impressions Review with 37 comments.
• Video: A Day in the Life of Anini with 40 comments in various places.
• Photo: Unknown. (Again I don’t have a good way to track this.)

Least Popular Seansense of 2008

• Post: Photography – The First 90 Days with 1 view and 0 comments. (There are others, but this is the only one with original content and more than a couple minutes work put into it.)
• Video: Hellhole Canyon with 188 views and 1 comment.
• Photo: My Pizza Fail utterly failed to impress anybody, even though we thought it was pretty funny.

Sean’s Favorite Seansense of 2008

• Post: Fifty-Five Hours in Israel – This was a fascinating journey and probably my best writing of the year.
• Video: NIN – Discipline (Unofficial Video) – Although this video wasn’t a huge internet sensation (804 views, 13 comments across various places) and gathered mixed reactions from friends and family, I put the most amount of work into it, and it came at the biggest cost; the camcorder’s screen was accidentally scratched while recording and we wasted quite a bit of perfectly good food to get all the shots.
• Photo: This is a tough one, but I think this picture is probably my favorite of the year, just because it makes me happy to look at it.

Sean’s Worst Seansense of 2008

• Post: In retrospect, I feed kind of bad for lambasting smart cars. After all, as far as fashion statements go, they are (were?) a positive trend.
• Video: My Torrey Pines Time Lapse experiment is rather headache inducing to watch. (Not recommended for epileptics.)
• Photo: Again it’s a tough choice, but this one is pretty bad.

Please share your own stats and best (or worst!) post, video, and photo of the year!

Happy 2009 to all, and thanks for reading, watching, and viewing!

Three different houses, three different house cats.

Marc’s cat Polly.

My mom’s cat Sashi.

My mother-in-law’s cat Dolly.

Well, I did it. I bought myself an early Christmas present: the Panasonic DMC-LX3 I’d been drooling over.

It is an interesting camera; when it comes to the specs everyone knows and loves, it doesn’t stand out. Its megapixel count is “only” 10.0, and the zoom is just 2.5x. Novices will shrug their shoulders and move on. In order to appreciate the camera, you have to know what an aperture number means (f/2.0 to f/2.8 anyone?) and have a feel for what a 24mm lens will do for you.

First impressions are very good. It feels nice in the hand, with a smooth metal case and a hefty piece of glass up front. The camera body is only about 1 inch thick, but the retracted lens adds close to another inch. The screen is very large and bright, and the controls seem decent, although the Menu button seems to function different from my brain, as I keep pressing it at the wrong times.

I bought this camera to fill a gap between my DSLR (Olympus E-500) and my little waterproof point-and-shoot (Olympus 770SW). Both cameras are are good in their respective elements, but neither excels at social occasions. The DSLR is too large to cart around to many events and can make people uncomfortable when you point it at them. The 770SW takes nice photos outside during the day, but is quite poor at night or indoors, when many gatherings take place.

So enter the DMC-LX3. With its fast, stabilized lens and small size, it seems to fill the gap nicely.

I played around in the house last night snapping pictures of every little thing I spotted and was quite impressed with the initial images. In macro mode at wide angle it can focus on things that are practically touching the lens, which is fun but dangerous! Below are some samples. Click here for a couple more.

f/2.0, 1/15 second, ISO 400, 16:9, standard color mode, hand-held

f/2.0, 1/30 second, ISO 160, 4:3, dynamic b&w, hand-held

I’ve been in a bit of a creative rut the last few months, but I feel that I’m finally starting to come back around with a renewed interest in my favorite creative hobby, photography. To get my mind back on track (and to help convince myself I’m not such a miserable failure), I thought it would be fun to look back on my first 90 days of being serious about taking pictures. On December 26th, 2001 I received a Canon PowerShot G2 for Christmas. This was my first good camera, and I had wanted it for quite a while. I really enjoyed using it and took some really fun pictures those first 90 days.

(Note: The photos have been “remastered” for your viewing pleasure.)

My first good creative picture.

One of my all-time favorites.

Statues can make good models.

+7 more in the the gallery.

Over the Thanksgiving break I went bowling with Mel, her brother Dave, and his friend Matt up in Oregon. I took a few photos with my Olympus Stylus 770SW, and despite the grain/blur, they’re fun pictures.

A couple of my favorites are below. There’s more in the gallery.

The quintessential bowling picture…

The Matrix is a system, Neo. A bowling system.

This was a fun situation to shoot in. It makes me want a small camera with manual controls that’s good in low light.

A few weeks ago, my job gave me an incredible opportunity: Travel solo halfway around the world to meet with a customer in Israel. The catch? The meetings would last just two days. If I wanted to stay longer it would be out of pocket. Since brining Mel along was not financially plausible, I decided to go ahead and set a personal time-distance record: 16,000 miles over 5 days.

Continue reading ‘Fifty-Five Hours in Israel’…

(We tried submitting this to FAIL Blog, but unfortunately it failed to meet their high standards.)

A while back I asked the question, “Can a camcorder beat a camera at its own game?” Apparently Nikon and Canon feel that I should have asked the opposite question, as they have just bust open a collective can of whoop-ass on the camcorder world with two new Digital SLR cameras.

Nikon landed the first punch with the new D90 DSLR, which can shoot 720P (1280×720) HD video at 24 frames per second. The camera can also take 12.3 megapixel stills and has fun features such as Live View and ultrasonic sensor cleaning. The D90 is available now and costs around $1,050 for the body only.

Canon hopes to land the knockout blow with its soon to be released Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which will bring a jaw-dropping 21.1 megapixel full-frame sensor to the game. The camera will be the first DSLR capable of recording “full HD” 1080P (1920×1080) video. The EOS 5D Mark II will be considerably more expensive than the D90 with a body-only MSRP of $2,699. It hits the markets in November.

So how do these showoff DSLRs compare to their camcorder cousins? Amazingly well, if the clips I’ve found on Vimeo are any indication. Take a look at beer through the lens of the D90.

And here we have some various footage from the heavyweight 5D Mark II:

These two cameras are game-changers. Their still image performance is exceptional as always, but now they allow photographers to shoot professional-quality video. The cameras may seem expensive, but camcorders with interchangeable lenses cost megabucks. The ability to shoot video through the wonderful glass from Canon, Nikon, and others is dream come true for many videographers. The cameras will open up the world of video to the hugely popular prosumer photography market, making cinematography more appealing for photographers with thousands already invested in lenses and other camera gear.

Obviously these cameras are still a bit too pricey for anyone but professionals and loaded amateurs, but the features from flagship models always trickle down to more affordable underlings over time. With the kind of flexibility offered by these cameras, you’d have to make a pretty good case for investing in a top of the line camcorder right now. Sure, the cameras do have downsides. The D90 uses the less than optimal Motion JPEG format for video. (The 5D Mark II records H.264 MOV files.) Also, HD camcorders feature built-in optical image stabilization, whereas the cameras will have to do stabilization on a lens-by-lens basis. Stabilization is very important when shooting HD video, as minor shakes are very obvious in the final product. It’s unclear how well lenses designed for photography will perform for video, and how the cameras will deal with video accessories like microphones and video lights.

Let me assure you, generous reader, that I am more than willing to conduct a full test of both cameras for you. Just send me your donation and/or evaluation units and I’ll get right on it!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Weird Al is my hero. Therefore I feel it is my duty to inform whoever still reads this blog that on 10/7 he released a new single titled “Whatever You Like”. The song is a parody of T.I.’s song by the same name.

You can buy the single on iTunes or listen for free on Weird Al’s MySpace Page.

Thank you, Weird Al. I was in a bad mood and this cheered me up!

P.S. If you’re like me and hadn’t heard of T.I. before today, I recommend you watch the original video before listening to the parody.