Camera Obscurity

I bought another picture-taking device used by photographers. Camera. A camera. That's what we call them these days.

A few years ago when it became time to sort out my possessions and trim them back I had 13 cameras. I cut that to two, one "big" and one small. I've hardly used the big one in the five years since, but do use the small one all the time. It's the best single camera I've ever had, a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-Hx50V (pant, pant).

It has a long name and a long reach: "The smallest 30x optical zoom camera", Sony says breathlessly, and it is good, for a tiny camera with a tiny sensor, and I love it, and am moving up to a different camera.

This new one is a Panasonic "LUMIX 4K Digital Camera ZS100 with 20 Megapixel Sensor, 25-250mm F/2.8-5.9 LEICA DC Lens Zoom, WiFi and Electronic Viewfinder - Black". Also pant, pant. That's a lot to say.

The "old" sensor is small. The "new" sensor is also small, but much larger. It's a case of a 1/2.3" sensor versus a 1" sensor, which is four times larger. Larger is gooder. One hundred sixteen square millimeters as opposed to twenty-eight point five. Sounds appropriately impressive, right?

The new lens doesn't have as much reach, but with the larger sensor I can crop the image and get close to the same effect. In Barnack (35mm) units, it's a case of 720mm versus 250mm. Optional digital zooms on each camera amount to 1440mm and 500mm, respectively, and result in somewhat degraded images.

The small sensor is great on simple subjects with little detail, like the murals I've been photographing for the last five years, as at the top of this post, but gets confused when there is too much detail, as in an outdoor scene.

So who gives a fart? Nobody. I'm only trying to stay in practice with blogging. The next post might be interesting, but don't expect it to be because I'm not.

Full speed ahead then, gentlemen, and let's try not to fall off our horses with excitement.

More info.

"Camera"

Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-Hx50V

Oskar Barnack

Roof Cats

Find the cat, eh?

Cats are where you find them. Always. This is what I found here:

• Place: el Hogar Cuencano, "back yard".
• Time: Morning, noon, and night.
• What: The neighbor's cat.
• Justification: Because.
• Result: Frustrated delight.

I like cats. Don't ask me why. Or ask, but don't expect an answer. I've given up on that sort of thing. Answers are not definitive, only descriptive.

I had a friend — knew him since second grade, had several consumer-grade falling outs with him around the age of 30, following his wife running off with someone else, lost contact, but.

But he was a strong believer in rationality. He liked reasons. Reasons as proof and verification of reality. I go the opposite way. Reasons are not definitive, only descriptive. As a Zen master said (bear with me) Life does not come from ideas. Ideas come from life.

Seems self-evident to me, but as it happens, my friend's brother argued this. First the universal sound, The Word, the fundamental vibration, the ur-idea, and then everything else, then the Golden Age of humanity, then corruption and evil, and now we have to struggle to get back there. Pretty standard drivel, but this was not from the usual Xtian theology but from Sant Mat. OK fine. Same bureaucratic crap.

Just another pseudo-rationalist reaction to life. When you are little, the world is great, expansive, good, and golden. When you grow up, not. Therefore, the human tendency is to extend this to cosmic proportions, and declare that in them olden days we lived in and under (and through, of course), the grace of god (or God, or GOD, etc.). And now we don't.

Because evil. Because hard. Because confusing. Because whatever. So, pseudo-rationalism, the twin assertions that "It just makes sense", and "It doesn't make sense". So "it" either has to be, or it can't be. Whether it is or not. Because arguments define reality.

My friend from second grade once argued that realistic paintings such as Rembrandt's were more accomplished because they were more realistic than anything Mondrian or Picasso had done. Because non-realistic art was not precise, or realistic. Right. He was like that. Probably still is.

Lay your face in a Xerox machine and what you get is better than any Rothko. Sure.

He (and his brother too — I wonder how this can run in families) also said things leading to assertions that all of life was rational, or should be. Like walking or digesting food, or having feelings. This is the sort of argument you hear when someone asserts that people choose to be homosexual or transgendered (or Norwegian, I guess, or white, brown, black, or green). Try digesting something in 10 different ways. Try shitting gold bars. Via consciously-controlled processes.

Rationality? No. Most of everything that happens in life may be understandable but is not conscious, and therefore cannot be rational or under deliberate control.

Like cats. I like cats. Don't ask me why. Or expect an answer. The only answer is that I like cats.

In North America houses have big open yards. Front yards. Back yards. Side yards. Go for a walk, especially early in the morning, and you'll eventually see a cat or two. If you're a decent person and learn how to do it, you can pick up a bunch of friends this way. If you like cats, and if you think that a cat can be a friend of yours. I do. Don't ask me why.

In South America, at least here in Cuenca, Ecuador, things are different. From what I've read and hear, I'd say that things are different in this way throughout Latin America, but I haven't seen Latin America, only this once city. But I think that things are pretty much the same: you don't see cats running up and down streets and climbing fences from one yard to another. Because that world does not exist here.

Houses here are slammed up hard against one another. There are no front yards or side yards. No back yards either, really. Places inside the embrace of their respective architectures, like the old Roman style of house, a courtyard-hugging quadrangle, have secret spaces inside them. And roofs. There are roofs. Roofs attract cats.

Roofs are safe, and cats like the high ground, away from dogs, bugs, and random annoyances. The high ground is clean, open, and mostly bug-free. "Bug me not", thinks the cat. So they climb.

Cats can do that. Dogs can't. People can't, hardly. Bugs stay low. Birds can't climb but they can land on roofs, which is a plus for cats. Cats like birds, in several ways, including as entertainment. Roofs provide that.

So what's the point here?

I like cats. That's it. And I had the chance to pssst! at a nice cat on the neighbor's roof and talk to it and photograph it. And that's how I entertain myself. When I find a cat and can't get close and patiently befriend it.

So there, then.

JBoob With Chicken

Hey. Don't blame me. I just pressed the button up toppa the camera.

J was already there, boobing around with a chicken on his shoulder. It was like that when I got there. It was like that.

I dint have nothin to do with the chicken neither. Is that a chicken? Who knows? It's something up there beaking into the sky. Might as well call it a chicken. Looks happy. Can't beat happy.

J don't look so much happy, but that's kind of the story. Sad to be here, sad about what seems to be happening, sad about what comes next. Even for the guy in charge it's not a happy story so I'll go with the chicken. Or the boob.

No.

No matter what it's a creepy boob. I don't know. What's the real story here?

Too late to ask, I just pushed the button. So away we go then, and something different next time.

True Pixels, False Hopes

It's all in your head, Fred, especially the delusions.

Another thing I learned — things are never as good as they look in the photos.

So when did I learn this? About 1952? A few weeks later? Surely not within the last six months, unless I am profoundly stupid. Which is a possibility, I guess.

Hard to say.

If I'm that stupid, then how can I tell? Ask someone? Ask lots? Ask enough people to get a statistically significant sample, then hammer on the responses with advanced math?

Maybe.

On the one hand, if I can do that, then I'm probably doing work sophisticated enough to qualify me as Not All That Stoopid. But on the other hand, if I do that, then maybe I'm so stupid that I'm auto-selecting myself for extermination. Because who would go through that kind of trouble to prove that they're not dumb — someone dumb would, right?

QED.

Which still leaves me wondering if I'm smart enough not to qualify as stupid, or stupid enough that I can't tell. I'll leave it to you. Come by some day and take a gander. Then deliver me the verdict, if you please.

And then stand back. I might not be as equable as you are imagining. Or as wimpy. You have been warned.

Among the other things that are never as good as they look in the photos: all rooms and apartments. That you see in photos. And which are unrecognizable in person. This is what I've learned, stupid or not. They always look better in photos. In the sense that they always look at least decent in photos, and usually much better than that.

One way they look different in person is how they smell. And another is how they sound. Photos always lie about these qualities in particular, even photos that try hard to be honest, and they do it all the time.

For instance, the place I'm in now.

It smells like an old man. Specifically, an accountant. With that turn-of-the-century staleness. Turn-of-the-century as in 20th century, folks. If you've ever spent time in an office building put up between 1890 and 1925, then you know it. It's unmistakable. My place is like that. No photo will tell you about it.

People too, of course. They're all different in person. They pop from two dimensions at best up to a minimum of three, and throw in motion and sound, and sentience and all those other dimensions, and you have what not even the truest color photograph can honestly bring to life.

And it's mostly marketing.

When you see a photo of a lawyer or a facilitator or a language teacher, or a place to live, you're supposed to feel sympathy, trust, longing and hopefulness, in different degrees depending on the subject.

But you're supposed to like it or her or him.

You see a plate of food, and it looks delicious, and you go there to have that meal and then you wonder WTF? Always happens.

Apartments? There are always surprises, like the electric tingle I get from the shower, or the slow drain that chokes on tiny nibbles of house dust, requiring daily unplugging. The leaky propane cylinder under the kitchen counter. Dim lights. Gallon-per-minute water flow in the sink. Stale closets. Uneven flooring.

You know?

Nothing is ever what you have been led to believe.

Which is why I, dearly, hope we never meet. So far I like you just the way you are.