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Usually stuff I’ve written personally, stuff I think is pretty good.

Shutter Priority

I’ll keep this short: don’t laugh, but I learned when1 to use shutter priority the other day, and it boils down to this: when you want to shoot at a certain shutter speed, then use shutter priority.

I’ve posted about this before:

So much of the time it’s like the three pillars are the world’s most intricate balancing act. Say you’re shooting people in an area where there isn’t much light. You start off in Av, at f/2.8 with an ISO of 100 — the camera says you’ll need 1/8th of a second, which means camera shake then becomes a factor. Upping the ISO above 800/1000/1250 means you have a more respectable shutter speed of 1/30, maybe even 1/60, but even at those speeds a shot can still be ruined by subject motion. In this kind of situation, what can you really do without adding more light into the equation? More ISO means your photos are starting to be fairly grainy indeed, and you can’t open the aperture any more because you’re already at the limit of your lens (or you want the DOF because nailing focus is hard, etc). Photography in these kinds of situations is seriously challenging, and it’s times like these that make you think: “hey, this stuff isn’t just child’s play”.

Then there was that short except that mentioned the theory behind shutter priority:

When you’re in low light, the two main worries are about exposure (not getting enough light) and camera shake (blurry pictures). If you set the camera to aperture priority then you’re only really dealing with half of the problem, which is light. When you’re in shutter speed priority, you can account for the camera shake (say, 1/30 or 1/50 of a second) and the aperture will adjust around the speed to produce the exposure.

I read that. Thought I understood it. It wasn’t until I actually tried it (and it worked) that I really understood it, though.

I shot a thing that didn’t have great lighting, and I was already at the ISO I was happy to shoot at (800, if you’re curious). I turned the mode dial to shutter priority, set it to 1/250, and voila — photos. Photos with a tiny DOF due to the 1.4 aperture of the lens I was using, yes, but much, much better than blurry photos. Maybe I’ll up the ISO next time even further; it’s only really noticeable in a handful of shots, and I would have liked more DOF for some group shots.

All in all, I was pretty happy with the results: this was probably the first “oh wow, this stuff actually works” moment I’ve had since taking photos. It’s crazy to think what’s possible if only I would try.

Up next: a short thing on film. Or maybe that Kindle review, we’ll see.

  1. Those with excellent reading comprehension will notice I used the word “when” instead of “how”, and that makes all the difference in the world. Like I said: you can read a billion things on photography and how to take better photos, but sometimes it won’t really click until you get out there and do it. Better gear won’t necessarily make you a better photographer, but more time behind the lens (usually) will. ↩

Up and Go

Alternate title: And Now, For Something Completely Different

Up and Go strawberry

Yes, I still have a few different posts in the cooker, all waiting for the right time to be written. Some days you just get a million and one thoughts on whatever random thought pops into your head, and sometimes, you feel like writing about exactly none of it. Such is life. Anyway…

You know how sometimes, looking at or doing something can evoke a memory from the distant past?

Yeah. I have one of those moments every time I see Up and Go.

For the uninitiated: Up and Go is like a drink, right. It’s made by the Sanitarium company, and it’s kinda like a liquid breakfast replacement, and it’s spectacularly delicious. Tastes kinda like sweetened soy milk, except it’s more viscous, having the same viscosity as, say, a slightly runny milkshake. It tastes like milk, for the most part, at least the kind of flavoured milk you buy in cartons. All up, it has a flavour and texture that’s uniquely hard to describe — it’s similar to a few things, but the same as none of them.

The packaging proudly proclaims that it has all kinds of things-that-are-supposed-to-be-good-for-you. It has protein! And it’s high in fibre! And it’s 98.5% fat free! I’m unsure about what kind of dietary benefits it actually provides, and as for it being a liquid breakfast… well, it does mean you can get up and go find a real breakfast, preferably in the trendiest little coffee shop you can find. It won’t give you wings or anything like that, but it is pretty tasty.

Far and away though, the thing I love most about Up and Go is the memory it evokes every time I see it in the supermarket, (inevitably) buy it, and then drink it. And you thought you lived a sheltered life: I was only introduced to this stuff way back in 2006!

I remember it clearly: we were on the Year 10 Outdoor Ed camp, a 5-day hike through some fantastic bushland (I forget where) with only what we had in our ruck. It was the third or fourth night when we camped right near a river, and one of my friends had this great Up and Go stuff. I mentioned I hadn’t tried it before, so she gave me one of hers. I read on the package that it was best served chilled, and it was either then that she or I came up with the idea to put it in the river overnight so it would be chilled by the next morning. I think it was mentioned half-jokingly, but being young and foolish I did so anyway…

The next morning, I awoke and eagerly went to check on my Up and Go so I could, you know, up and go for another long day of walking. It was then I discovered the Up and Go was very well chilled — I poked the included straw through the hole, and suddenly, tasted the most incredible beverage ever.

It was a fresh morning, but that was nothing compared to how intense this Up and Go was. From that point on, I was hooked — and now, every time I go interstate or house-sitting with friends, I try and track down a bottle or few boxes of Up and Go. That stuff is crazy good.

If you’re up for something new and have never tried Up and Go before, get a single box the next time you’re at the supermarket or at a corner shop. The 250ml package you see above comes in a 6-pack, but if you want just one hit, get the 750ml variety (I think). Enough to keep you up and going well past morning tea, at the very least…

Enjoy!

Can we talk about video games?

I have about a million and one thoughts on various aspects of photography and tech (I got a Kindle Touch!) which I’m going to write about a little later, but just for now, can we talk about video games for a second?

I’ll start with this: nobody likes guys.

Nobody. Likes. Guys.

Or so says the Thought Catalog piece that sparked this piece on video games. What is it about video games, man? What is about video games that makes people start foaming at the mouth whenever someone even mentions DICE are working on a new title, or that Notch has something new on the horizon?

I wrote about Medal of Honor a little while ago, and it was while watching the new Medal of Honor trailer that it dawned on me: video games are all about enjoyment, and maybe, just maybe, feelings. When you play games like Mass Effect (I wrote about that too), with games that tell the same story over a period of years, you feel something for the characters. For Commander Shepard, and for you. When you play games like Medal of Honor and you’re falling off a cliff trying to escape from people you were previously hunting down, that feels real. For Rabbit of AFO Neptune, and for you.

I recently re-played the single-player campaign of Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor, and it was then I realised why it was enjoyable. It was about the storyline, yes, but also about experiencing gameplay as a game designer wanted you to experience it. A game designer, sitting a desk in a country you’ve only read about or seen photos of, wanted you to experience a game in a very specific way. And not just you, but everyone who played the game. How crazy is that? Think about that.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the multiplayer aspect of games. Even more so when playing with friends over voice comms. But I was thinking about the Fallout 3 campaign, how your choices impacted gameplay, and I realised that single player gaming will always have my attention. Single player means you have unique experiences, exactly as the game designer wanted.

And yeah, a big part of these experiences are the graphics. I’ve been looking forward to the new Medal of Honor ever since I played through the 2010 game, and the new Medal of Honor trailer looks fantastic. Rightly so, because it’s based on the same engine as Battlefield 3. But what’s up with the trailer for Ghost Recon Future Soldier looks terrible by comparison? The graphics look like something out of 2005 — honestly, they’re not that much better than the Battlefield 2 intro (the Battlefield 3 remake of which is fantastic, by the way). Call me crazy, but I know there are heaps of games that offer brilliant gameplay experiences — but if the graphics just aren’t there, then I can’t really play the for any length of time.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s a combination of heaps of things that mean people play games. What I’m trying to say is that you should go read the Thought Catalog piece on The Games Guys Play, because it explains everything a little better than I just did.

Taking Better Photos

I was lurking the OCAU photography forums the other day, as you do, and I came across a post talking about gear and better photos. Of course, that’s a whole other kettle of fish I’ll touch another day, but the key message was that you don’t need the latest and greatest to take good photos.

Everyone succumbs to it (at least as much as their budget allows) at some point during whatever hobby they decide to take up, and for good reason: who doesn’t want the latest and greatest iPhone, graphics card, bike, camera, or lens? I’m taking about GAS, or Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

In his post, Cleary smacks down a fellow photographer who has recently acquired the newest from Canon, the 5D mark III. It’s a fantastic camera, an improvement over the previous full-frame great while still within the reach of mere mortals. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little at the stupendous ISO performance and brilliant AF accuracy.

I’ll quote:

I began shooting/contributing here about the same time as you (give or take), and was always a bit jealous of the gear that you were able to afford.
As you’ve specced up your gear though, the quality of your shots has not really seen the same improvement, and unfortunately these shots are continuing that tradition.

If I were you, I would be getting back to basics. You have the gear, you have the endpoint you’re aiming for (live dance photography), now you need to work on finding the path to that endpoint.

I said GAS was something pretty much everyone is affected by, others more so than others due to disposable income and whatever else, and it’s true — during my first few months of 60D ownership I was lusting over the most expensive glass money could buy, and yet my photos weren’t getting better on a similar scale, I upgraded to better glass pretty quickly, thinking that it would improve the photos I was taking.

Did it? Well, sure it did, but in its own way: don’t get me wrong, when the 17-55 is good it’s abso-freakin-lutely fantastic, but by the same token, it reminds me that so much of the photo is determined by the guy behind the lens. I’ve seen how good photos can turn out using that lens, and I’ve also seen how bad others can turn out, too. I walked into work one time with it hung around my neck, and a colleague asked me if my took good photos; I reluctantly smiled and said “Yeah, it does”, lest I get into some long-winded discussion on how much of photography is the photographer, not the gear they use.

I guess the take home message here is that it doesn’t matter what kind of gear you have, at least, perhaps not as much as you think it does. I met up with Alex Wise back in February, and we talked about gear: you can talk all day about which Nikon ultra-wide is better than the other, and whether lenses that have IS/VR are less sharp than those without. You can argue all day long about these kinds of things, but at the end of the day, what kinds of photos are you taking? I mean, what are you shooting? Getting the fine-grained technical aspects of photography and gear is important, but all of it is entirely moot if you’re not actually shooting.

So instead of buying gear, buy a book. Or something that I’ve been doing lately: go watch some videos on YouTube about how to improve your post-processing in Lightroom or whatever software you use. Read articles on websites about how to take better photos, like this one which describes using Shutter Priority to take photos with subjects in low-light and avoiding blur:

When you’re in low light, the two main worries are about exposure (not getting enough light) and camera shake (blurry pictures). If you set the camera to aperture priority then you’re only really dealing with half of the problem, which is light. When you’re in shutter speed priority, you can account for the camera shake (say, 1/30 or 1/50 of a second) and the aperture will adjust around the speed to produce the exposure. 

Even if there’s not enough light, the aperture will automatically go to it’s widest, and you can play with the photo in post production. At least that way you don’t have a blurred photo, which you can’t fix (yet).

Moral of the story: worry about the gear, but don’t let it stop you taking better photos. A multi-thousand dollar lens won’t make your pictures multi-thousands of dollars better, but more time behind the lens (probably) will.

Relay for Life 2012

Another year, another relay.

After seeing a great tilt-shift time lapse by a guy in Melbourne, I thought it would be time to try my hand at time lapses, and what better event to do it at other than the Relay for Life 2012?

The original plan was to do a tilt-shift time-lapse in the same style, but then I found out that a lot of the work would have to be done in post. The way the guy did it in the video was with his Canon S95, a great little point-and-shoot. Turns out, the S95 does it pretty much automatically… Not fair!

With only a DSLR an still wanting to do time-lapses, I decided to acquire some gear.

First on the list: a GoPro. Truth be told this could have been anything with a built-in intervalometer, but I wanted to try a GoPro. In past years we’ve had a pram going around the track for close to 24 hours straight, so I thought making a time lapse of the event that way would be kinda cool. I borrowed a GoPro from my boss, and that was that.

During testing of the GoPro a few days before the event, I discovered it only had about 3 hours of battery life. I wanted to do a continuous time lapse of 24 hours, so I needed a way to power it. Cue external USB battery pack with massive 10,600mAh capacity and 2.1A output. The GoPro has a battery capacity of about 1,100mAh, so I was covered there.

The GoPro would cover me from ground level, but I still wanted to do some kind of a tilt-shift one lapse. Or at least another time lapse from another vantage point. To that end, I borrowed a time lapse camera from a friend, a dedicated time lapse unit that was designed specifically to take time lapses of plants. The plan was to mount this unit somewhere up high, looking down on as much of the area as possible.

Finally, I borrowed a smaller point-and-shoot with a built in intervalometer from a colleague for even more time lapses, just in case things went pear-shaped with either of the other cameras.

With four cameras (three for time lapses and my own DSLR), I think I was ready for whatever was going to happen at Relay.

So, how did it all turn out?

Hobart Relay for Life 2012 Time Lapse

The GardenCam got knocked about a little. You can see in the video above, it changes angle a few times, the quality isn’t great, the focal length is too long, yada yada. The positioning could have been better, but then mounting it would have been a pain. As it turns out, the GardenCam has a very slight (completely unintentional) tilt-shift effect — but I think that’s more the camera being completely crap at focusing rather than anything else.

The GoPro worked out pretty much exactly as I thought it was going to, but the end result wasn’t as spectacular as I thought it was going to be. Maybe a photo every ten seconds was too long in between shots, but the resulting time lapse has parts where things just shoot by at a rapid pace.

For a time lapse to look good, you’ve got to have a nice connection between the shots. If the camera itself is moving (as mine was), then maybe shots more often is a good thing. I have a hunch that less FPS during the final movie (the 10-15fps mark, slower playback speed) in the final movie works better for time lapses with a fixed camera. Take more photos with a moving camera, speed up the FPS in the final movie (24-30fps). But then again, a lot of this is just pure guesswork on my part — you’ll just have to experiment to see what looks good1. Next time I would probably err on the side of taking more photos and varying the speed of playback in post — you can’t go back and re-take photos on the day, but you can cut out stuff in post.

Definitely worth looking at again.

  1. I hate posts on creative subjects that say “just do what you think looks good”. “Just play with the sliders until it looks good.” “Just tweak the exposure until you get it just right.” WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? Give me direction any day: “play with the exposure until you get something that isn’t too overexposed, but at the same time brings out the colour.” If you’re going to say “just play/experiment”, give the person a little direction as to what they’re aiming for, and what they’re trying to avoid. ↩

Mass Effect 3

Now that I’ve finished my first playthrough of ME3 and grinded my way through some multiplayer, I’ve been sitting on a second playthrough for about a week now.

That is to say, I’ve started my second playthrough, but haven’t actually played any of it yet. A FemShep, Vanguard, Paragon, if you must know.

The way I’ve played all three Mass Effect games thus far is that the first play through is always using the default male Shepard, with all choices made as I would make them. Usually this falls on the Paragon side of things, with decisions made as I would make them (with perhaps a bit of divination as to what might happen in the future). Many people play Mass Effect like this, as it is, after all, a role-playing game.

The second play through is a little more relaxed in terms of choice. It’s the play through that lets me experiment with different choices, as well as allowing me to be a hard-ass Renegade where I believe it’s required. The second play trough is usually played as a female Shepard, too, just so I can experience another level of voice acting and see the difference between the two Shepards.

Then the play throughs get a little murky. I only completed the above two play throughs on Mass Effect 1, but for Mass Effect 2 I started a third play-through, a pure Renegade FemShep. Never got around to finishing that, because my interest at that point waned (not too unexpected when you’ve already completed the 30-hour storyline… twice).

Now that the background is all out of the way, I can tell you why I haven’t brought myself to continue my second play through of ME3 beyond the first priority mission.

It’s about choice.

You see, dear reader, Mass Effect is all about choice. The Mass Effect series has always been about the choices you make as a player, as male or female Commander Shepard. And that’s why I can’t bring myself to play Mass Effect 3 any more than once.

Let me explain: in the first two Mass Effect games, you have lots of choices to deal with. Some of those choices carry across to the second Mass Effect game, and some of the decisions you make in ME2 carry across to ME3, and so on. Lots of choices, like, literally, quite a few — so many that it’s reported over 100 variables are carried across from Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3. As an aside, the whole concept of continuing the same character across games is a brilliant, ingenious concept that I really think more games should adapt: rewarding players for hanging onto their save files so they can continue the story in future titles is nothing short of brilliant, and doubly so in a role-playing game centred around the story. There are small issues with this approach, one being that there isn’t a way to “confirm” your choices in later games (in case you lose your save file); what I’d love to see is some kind of prologue to each game that makes you make those decisions again, but I can see how that would potentially sour the game for many. Tough call, but I digress.

Okay, so back on track: Mass Effect forces you to make choices. Not necessarily decisions between good and evil, but more subtle decisions: sometimes the decision between being a nice guy and a ruthless hard-ass isn’t as clear as some of us would like it to be. Like whether to free the Rachni queen. Or whether to keep a mad Salarian scientist’s work on curing the Genophage. Or killing Urdnot Wrex on Virmire. And so on and so forth; as a player you’re never sure how the outcome of your decisions will turn out. It keeps you guessing throughout the series, and it’s great.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting: for the most part, you had no idea how these decisions were going to affect future games. Maybe your act of goodwill in letting the Rachni queen live will come back to bite you in the arse in a future title. Maybe Urdnot Wrex turns out to be indoctrinated, I don’t know. The thing is, in the first two titles of the Mass Effect trilogy, you pretty much can do whatever you want without there being too drastic consequences (at least, not consequences you care about, not consequences you actually know about).

Mass Effect 3 changes all of that. Suddenly, you know what the end-game is. Suddenly, your decisions will weigh heavily on you, moreso if you made the “wrong” decision somewhere along the line.

Being the third title in a trilogy must be pretty hard. Even before you rip open the packaging, you know that this is it. After this, there’s not going to be any of a series you have some kind of a vested interest in, emotionally or otherwise. You know that after this, there will be no more. It’s the final countdown. The end of days. The beginning of the end.

Which is why, as you make your choices in Mass Effect 3, you make them damn carefully. Unless you’re some kind of sadist who doesn’t care about the story at all, you’re going to try and get the “best” ending possible. You’re going to try and make peace with everyone. You try to “do what’s right”, to play the hero Shepard everyone seems to think you are. So many times during Mass Effect 3, I sat there for minutes on end, staring at that little dialog choice circle, agonising over the choice I had to make. Because short of saving right before and reloading saves (a practice somewhat frowned upon), there’s no going back. What choice you make will either be the right one, or haunt you until the very end. There’s no sense in being a ruthless, at-all-costs Renegade, because even though you might get the job done, you’re not going to make many friends along the way. And that, ladies and gents, could affect how it all plays out in the end.

Which brings us, somewhat nicely, to the section wherein I talk briefly about the ending that everyone seems to be so upset over. People have petitioned Bioware over the ending in Mass Effect 3, and rightly so, in my opinion. Gaping plot holes and non-sensical cut-scene theatricals aside, the ending is so incredibly unsatisfying it’s an embarrassment. Unsatisfying is probably too light a word; if I’ve invested over a hundred hours into a series of three games spanning a number of years, I want the ending to be to my satisfaction. I’m all for leaving the reader guessing at the end, but the ending of Mass Effect 3 just doesn’t do the rest of the trilogy justice. It’s almost as if Bioware just ran out of time and/or money to put together something as stellar as the rest of the series, and now we have… The Ending That Shall Not Be Discussed. I mean, this is the culmination of everything you’ve been working towards ever since the first Mass Effect, and for what? I wish I could say something other than “a wholly unsatisfactory ending”, but I can’t.

Yes, it could probably be argued that the entirety of Mass Effect 3 is the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy, and in some respects you’d be absolutely correct. That’s not the point though, the point is that the climax of one of the most anticipated games this year, not to mention the entire series, feels like a complete and utter let-down by Bioware. They dropped the ball on this one; not just a small fumble, a complete and utter shambles.

Phew. The good news is Bioware has apparently caved and are planning to re-work things a little. Exactly what that means is still up in their air, but at this stage I’d be prepared to DLC my way to a better ending, whatever that might entail. Bioware, are you listening? I’ll gladly pay for a better ending, one that’s worthy of flying the Alliance flag.

But you know what? Mass Effect 3 is still a fantastic, triple-A title. As a whole, Mass Effect has evolved a little throughout the series, but only to culminate in what is easily the best game of the year thus far.

It’s a passable third-person shooter with quite a decent wave-based co-op multiplayer reminiscent of Left 4 Dead’s survival, or Horde mode in Gears of War, that also features objectives every few waves. The single campaign is where it’s at for the majority of players though, and that’s where Mass Effect shines. The storyline is unparalleled, the pacing, fantastic, and besides that ending that we really shouldn’t be talking about, it has very few, faults.

I’ll admit, there were many times during Mass Effect 3 that I felt something. Reunions with past squad mates in the previous game are particularly heartfelt, as is hilarious dialogue with likeable characters. Mass Effect 3 has managed to pull off one of the hardest hitting emotional aspects of any game I’ve played, and it does it so well. There were times during the game that I sat back and thought: hey, why don’t more games do this? Or, I love how this game manages to evoke some kind of response from the player. The down time between missions isn’t as frantic as the main storyline, and there are periods where you’ll be standing around on the Citadel trying to work out where you’re going/doing next, but it’s all good. All part of the package, if you will. Mass Effect 3 is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of gaming today, whether you think the ending sucked or not.

Mass Effect 3 is the very definition of Role Playing Game, with one of the most epic plots that’s as engaging as it is compelling — triple that if you’ve played the previous games; if you get sucked in, hang on and take a deep breath — you’re in for one crazy ride.