So I'm 'home' from vacation. We left Cooke City, MT Thursday morning, after checking weather and such several times, and decided to get outta Dodge any way possible. Which meant, since several park roads were closed, that we had to take a 'scenic' highway back to Cody. "Scenic" meaning long twisty roads going up and down mountains and taking forever to get nowhere. And of course, more snow. So several hours of my parents arguing and complaining, and we were out of the mountains. We stopped in Cody for a while, visited a miniature village thingie, which was positively ridiculous, then made our slow way out of Wyoming, stopping at Devil's Tower for an hour or two. Dad and I walked the path around the tower (which is a much longer path than I would have thought, when I thought we were 3/4 of the way finished... 10 yards up the trail was a halfway point sign.)
After leaving Devil's Tower, we argued a lot about where to stop, or even if to stop, for the night, and then finally went on to Wall, SD. Where we spent the night. There was a mosquito in the hotel room. Grr.
The next morning, Friday, we traveled East, stopping at Huron at my brother's house for several hours. While there, he proceeded to show off how great his camera is and how great his photography is compared to our vacation pictures, and how we did everything wrong, that we didn't know enough about our cameras to 'properly' use them 'to the fullest' and that we screwed up because we didn't get this feature, or that lens or what-the-crap-ever... I may not know in 3 seconds or less how many pixels my camera has. That's not how my mind works. If you give me a minute to think, I can answer. But if you give me 4 technical and one art question in one minute, I'm not going to process them all, I'm going to answer the art and get wrapped up in my answer and forget technical stuff. If you ask me how to change something on my camera while I'm looking at it, I can show you. If you ask me while I'm across the room and working on 3 other things for you, I'm not even going to answer. And frankly, if you ask me how to change the quality of my pictures, I probably can't tell you without trying it several times, because, quite frankly, I shoot on the highest quality my camera has to offer. I don't care that I can take more pictures by using a lower quality. Why would I want several mediocre pictures when I can have a couple great ones?
Second, I have had my camera for 2 weeks. Of course I don't know as much about my camera as he knows about his. He's had his for 6 months. and you know what? I took 3/4 of my pictures hanging out the back window of the car going 45 mph through the park. He takes 10 minutes to set up a shot of a parked car down the street.
Third, I HATE live-view. So I didn't get the more expensive camera that has it. I prefer to use the view finder for all my pictures. It's steadier and I feel like I get a better shot that way. Let's face it, a 10 pound camera is a lot of weight for my to hold up steadily to take a picture. So for me to pick a 20 pound camera and hold it at arm's length and hold it steady while taking a picture is ridiculous. That's almost 30% of my weight. If he likes Live-view, that's his preference. He can have it on his camera, I don't care. It's MY camera and I never asked for his opinion, or his 30 minute tirade on why I need to be able to take a picture by looking through my LCD screen.
I also don't care how much he can zoom to look at the new picture on his screen. The reason I shoot digital is so that I can look at the pictures and edit them on my computer. Why would I want to crop and save a picture on the camera?
He may know some technical things about his camera that I don't know about mine. But here's the catch: would he know that much about his camera if he didn't have to sell it? Chris is a Wal-Mart manager. He has to be able to answer questions about cameras that I would never even imagine asking. I can't explain a lot of things to my dad when he asks. That's because I know how to use it, but not how it works. Chris has to be able to explain things to people who don't understand any technology (such as my dad). (And another thought: if he's so stinkin' smart, why did he have to ask me the difference between a compact flash card and an SD card?)
Chris may know how to change the pixels in his camera, but I know what hot shoes are, I know how to sync lights, how to use a manual light meter, what an F-stop is, and how to balance the aperture with the shutter speed. I can use hot lights, spot lights, radio transmitters and light tables. I'd like to see him even figure out which light is which.
We looked at vacation pictures on his TV using discs I burned and using his camera. Yeah, his pictures looked better. BUT his were going directly from the camera to his TV via the AV cables. Ours however, were burned onto discs and played through his DVD player, on wide-screen. They were being stretched horizontally, but not vertically. So, of course, ours are gonna be distorted.
Wow, this was supposed to be an entry about the end of my vacation and coming home and such, not a rant about my brother. And that was only the first 2 hours we were with him. We were there for 7 hours.... so yeah, my brother frustrates the hell out of me. We had supper at Godfather's with him, the food was good, I can imagine better company, then we headed home. We got home 11ish, I played with the cat, took a bath and did some general getting used to being home and then went to bed. Satuday didn't really do much, Sunday, went to Sunday School, left early, drove dad to work in Spencer *ooh* I passed someone for the first time, usually I just patiently drive behind them... pirated some internet, goofed around that night and Monday... Now, Wednesday, I'm at Finleys'. Got here yesterday about 1ish. Will be here until Friday. Better than being at my house tho. Can't wait to go home to Andy.
Tune in for more tirades later, gotta fix a little lady some lunch.