Skateboarder

One of the things I had discussed with my instructor when she asked me what I was interested in was photojournalism.  I like the idea of taking pictures at football/basketball/baseball/softball games or track meets, golf tournaments and almost any sporting event.  I could also see myself taking pictures after a natural disaster to document the recovery effort and the emotions, pain and strife that has been caused.  All of those things interest me as a way to make a difference.  So Elena and I were out for a walk yesterday and as I passed by one of our local parks I could hear the scraping of skateboards coming from the skate park.  I decided to go check it out.  Elena was absolutely mesmerized by all the action.  I don't think she made a sound the entire time we were there.  She just watched and pointed at all the skaters.  The following picture is the best one I got while we were there.  What I really love is the total contradiction created by an Iowa farm boy in cowboy boots and non-saggy jeans doing an entirely urban activity (and doing it well.)

Too many megapixels?

So Nikon has come out with two of the highest megapixel cameras on the market recently.  the 36mp D800 and now the 24.2mp D3200.  I currently use a Canon XS which only has a measly 10.1mp and I can still take great pictures.  Granted, I haven't blown anything up to greater than an 8x10 picture, but I know I could if I wanted to.  I can go up to poster sized if I'd like.  My typical file size is approx 3MB for JPG and 10MB for RAW.  That is alot of file space, especially if you believe and exercise the spray and pray approach.  I recently took 118 pictures of my daughter with both RAW and JPG files and ended up with 1.55GB of files!  How big would my hard drive need to be to handle those files if my JPG's were 12MB and 20.4MB for RAW!

The other drawback to having that many pixels is digital noise.  I've been told that the digital noise on a D800 is ridiculous.  Now if you pack that same ratio of pixels into a crop sensor like the D3200 what would you expect for noise?  I would expect the same amount and even with the new processors, are you really going to be able to use ISO 12800?  At what point does the industry decide enough is enough?  I guess never and we'll just have to keep dealing with features that MOST OF US WILL NEVER NEED!  Sure, I would like to upgrade to a 7D or even a 60D but not because of the higher megapixels, but because of the better AF and faster burst rates and quieter operation.  I would even love to eventually upgrade to the 5D line to make use of the full format sensor for landscape photography, but not (I repeat NOT) for the higher MP and ISO rates.  Those are just silly and unnecessary for almost anyone.