I could see the future rushing up to meet me

[sovay]

The only pictures I took in New York were at Flushing Meadows; I hadn't brought my camera, so I used derspatchel's phone. Here are a few.



This is not a picture I took at Flushing Meadows. This is a picture of me on the B&B Carousell at Coney Island. I'd asked Rob to take a picture of my horse, which he did next, but it turned out I didn't mind his first try.



The Unisphere. From here on all photographic faults are my own. I really like this one.



Rob's phone is not so great about its zoom function; it doesn't pixellate so much as it becomes sort of blocky and abstract. [edit: rinue explains why in comments.] I still like how the structure frames itself here.







Deleted, some sculpture that came out weirdly blued and a Mercury Atlas rocket at an unsuccessfully canted angle. I took a bunch of the Observation Towers which I think came out well, but I'm not sure they all came out so equally well that I should inflict them on LJ. But here, the sky in a webwork of guy wires. The last one is my favorite. It reminded me of the sun-petaled stage design Peter Shaffer describes in the script of The Royal Hunt of the Sun.

I am sorry there are not more pictures of us, wandering around the future of the past. I suppose we'll have to go back.

P.S. Some kind person has put up all eight and a half hours of the RSC's Nicholas Nickleby on YouTube, just as if I wanted to compare it with the published script. There goes my free time.

Comments

[rinue.livejournal.com]

As a note on the zoom, having not seen Rob's camera but knowing a bit about cameras: it's possible what you're running into is the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom is real zoom - glass moving around in a lens, like a magnifying glass or microcscope. Digital zoom is a simulation of zoom . . . by which I mean it's a photo crop done by your camera, which doesn't have the same power as a computer. Digital zoom doesn't actually zoom in on anything; it just takes a smaller and lower resolution picture (because instead of saving the entire image registered on the sensor, it only saves the bit you've "zoomed" in on).

Basically, digital zoom is a big lie/conspiracy by camera companies. For a clear image, you're better off turning it off (which most cameras/phones will have somewhere in their settings menu) and cropping the picture when you get home (even using microsoft paint or similar). This will not deactivate any optical zoom (real zoom) the camera has. (You'll usually be able to hear when the camera is doing an optical zoom, because there are gears turning and real objects moving around and sliding against each other. Digital zoom is typically silent.)

Apologies if you know all this already and prefer in-camera zoom for the convenience (which fair enough).

[sovay]

Apologies if you know all this already and prefer in-camera zoom for the convenience (which fair enough).

No, it's useful information; I didn't know the mechanics of the difference. Rob's camera in this case was actually his phone, meaning it now makes sense that the zoom on it is crap. He has a very fine actual camera (as seen here), but it didn't come with us on this trip. I should change the caption to reflect that.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

You can get a little zoom lens to tack onto a camera phone. Search Photojojo. (I don't have one, I've been meaning to get one---Burrito Justice seems to get acceptable results with it, and I too no longer carry a "real" camera everywhere.)