Robot Apple Monkey Blog

I’ve always been a firm believer that when you’re buying something that you intend to use a lot and/or keep for a significant period of time, buy the best that you can afford, rather than taking the cheap option. I think that ultimately, you get more out of the item itself, and you also can often save on replacements/repairs since cheap options don’t have such a good lifespan.

To put this in context … in the past 12 months I’ve bought a new bike (Kona Dew Deluxe) and a new camera (Nikon D80). In both cases there were cheaper options available, even staying in the same broad requirements (a cheaper hybrid bike, or a cheaper DSLR), but I decided to pay for the best gear I could afford.

One of the problems with this attitude though, is that with some purchases it’s not the initial hardware that hurts. It’s the “Razor and Blades” scenario, but this time it’s a much larger scale.

Take, for example, the camera. When we got it, we paid a reasonable $1300 for the D80 with a 18-135mm lens included in a kit. But having a “real” camera, and starting to get more interested in photography, I’m now shopping around for accessories. First thing I hunted for was a 50mm f/1.8 lens. This was supplied by my partner as a birthday present, but the price tag was around $200 … a significant percentage of the initial purchase price of the camera. If I’d been after the higher-spec f/1.4 version of the lens, that would’ve been closer to $500!

A short while back I started to look at tripods, remote shutter releases and a good quality bag to carry all this stuff in. While you can get tripods very, very cheap in various places, I’ve looked at some and there is no way I would trust 1.5kg+ of camera and lens on them … In fact, I have a crappy tripod that I got from Zazz for about $25, and it’s so poor that the head doesn’t even sit level. On a flat, level floor, you need to adjust the legs to different heights so that the head of the tripod and the camera are level. No thanks. So now I’ve just spent $470 for a remote control ($50), bag $(120), tripod and head ($300). If you’re interested in what gear I’m using, check out the Camera Gear page.

This is just the camera hardware! Then we go back to the computer, where after several weeks of research and agonising, I caved in and bought a 23 inch Apple Cinema Display. That one really hurt the bank balance, but once I dropped it on my desk and took out the crappy 19 inch Viewsonic monitor that it replaced, it felt like the right decision. But now I’m looking for software to take me out of iPhoto … And I haven’t even started on the bike gear!

So beware! Always buy the best you can afford, I stick to that. But make sure you know what buying the best entails, now and in the future!

Tags: apple, cycling, d80, photography

So I read on my local paper’s website that the 30 second TV spot is in trouble, and product placement is on the rise. I think the first half of the argument is a little premature, but there’s no doubt that product placement is becoming more and more prominent in film and television, at least that coming out of the big US machines. I’ve certainly started to notice it more and more in stuff that I’ve been watching, although it’s likely that that’s at least partially because my sensitivity to such things has been raised.

But surely it’s getting ridiculous when movie trailers start picking up the (sponsor’s) message and running with it. Have a look at the trailer for the latest Jim Carrey film, “Yes Man“. Seems to be all going fine until you get to about 1 minute in … even then it’s just dropped casually. Then about 10 seconds later, in case you missed the first one, RED BULL RED BULL RED BULL RED BULL. I mean, I get it, the movie industry wants more money, and they can get that from advertisers in the form of product placement. How else do you explain Apple usage in “Hollywood America” being exponentially larger than the regular USA? But sometimes it’s just ridiculous.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m thirsty …

Tags: advertising, movie, product placement, rant

One thing about your internet being capped … makes it much easier to focus on sorting through photos!

Whittled the 200-odd photos taken while skiing in July down to 21 shots uploaded to flickr. Check them out over there. The down side is that while I was sorting through iPhoto, I found another batch of photos that need sorting, so my total didn’t go down quite as much as I was hoping. Still, 406 is a better number than 600.

Tags: photography, skiing

I’ve always been interested in photography. Not too interested, but a lazy interest in knowing the basics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also have an interest in the gear itself, so when my partner and I bought a digital SLR last year, we decided to get the Nikon D80

The good, and bad, thing about having a good camera is that you feel the need to justify the large sums of money spent on it by taking a lot of photos. Although I enjoy taking photos, I’m typically not the type of person to photographically record every major event, simply because I hate being that guy who wanders around at a party taking photos, not having a party. As a result, my photos tend towards landscapes and places, rather than people. What it also means is that when I do take the camera out, I take a LOT of photos.

Coming back from a recent ski trip, the camera had 250-odd photos on it. Not bad given that it was one day of photos in a place where, trust me, I’ve taken a lot of photos in the past. And then this past weekend was up at my parents’ property (”The Glen”) in the Hunter Valley (just north of Sydney), which netted another 266 photos. Combine that with some other, smaller “rolls” and my “Current Working” set - being all the photos I need to filter through, clean up and upload - is sitting at around 600 now.

Of course, that will filter down to something like 30-40 shots that make it up to my flickr page, but that’s a lot of culling to do! And on that note, I’ve got some photo tweaking to do - expect some serious picspam in a post soon!

For now, here are four shots that I uploaded quickly, just so it felt like I got something done.

Bee and Cherry Blossom 1

Bee and Cherry Blossom 2

View From the House

Front Paddock

Tags: cherry blossom, d80, photography, The Glen

Okay, I haven’t even finished setting up the main theme for Robot Apple Monkey Blog, but thanks to WPtouch, I now have a very nice looking iPhone skin. Visit on MobileSafari and tell me what you think.

Tags: iphone, Meta