The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology
Welcome to TDWTF Forums Sign in | Join | Help
in Search

Runner up prizes?

Last post 05-21-2007 6:12 PM by Worf. 15 replies.
Page 1 of 1 (16 items)
Sort Posts: Previous Next
  • 05-18-2007 2:53 PM

    • Worf
    • Not Ranked
    • Joined on 05-15-2007
    • Posts 14

    Runner up prizes?

    From the original contest description

    There will also be some runner up prizes, but they won’t be nearly as cool the High-Resolution JPEG (or the new laptop).

     Any guesses on what they may be?
     

  • 05-18-2007 2:54 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Probably a free copy of Visual C# Express. :p
    Agile Team-Oriented Waterfall-Centric Cowboy Coder.
  • 05-18-2007 3:18 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    A calculator program, complete with source code.
  • 05-18-2007 4:50 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    A low-resolution JPEG and a wooden table.
  • 05-18-2007 11:34 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    stolen_username:
    A low-resolution JPEG and a wooden table.
    Why not a low-resolution JPEG OF a wooden table?
    Download my OMGWTF entry, Romanorum Computus
  • 05-18-2007 11:38 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Einsidler:
    Why not a low-resolution JPEG OF a wooden table?

    Even better. 

  • 05-19-2007 5:29 AM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Or just a wooden table so that you can make your own low-res JPEG!
    OMGWTF - Are you enterprisey enough?
  • 05-19-2007 11:17 AM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    I could use a wooden table... But I'll need a low-megapixel digital camera, too.
  • 05-19-2007 12:12 PM In reply to

    • phaedrus
    • Top 500 Contributor
    • Joined on 03-20-2007
    • Seattle Ex-Pat living in the Bay Area
    • Posts 111

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Welbog:
    I could use a wooden table... But I'll need a low-megapixel digital camera, too.

    Check your cell phone.  I just got a new one, and I couldn't find one without a low-megapixel camera.  Nobody makes phones that are just phones anymore.   

    All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
    -- H. L. Mencken
  • 05-19-2007 1:45 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    phaedrus:

    Welbog:
    I could use a wooden table... But I'll need a low-megapixel digital camera, too.

    Check your cell phone.  I just got a new one, and I couldn't find one without a low-megapixel camera.  Nobody makes phones that are just phones anymore.   

    I don't know if they're actually manufactured any more, but the Nokia 1100 is still on the market. I just love the looks on the faces of all these people with their fancy camera "smartphones", when I tell them that I charge my cellphone once a fortnight and never run out of power.

  • 05-20-2007 3:00 AM In reply to

    • IMil
    • Not Ranked
    • Joined on 05-26-2006
    • Posts 30

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Welbog:
    I could use a wooden table... But I'll need a low-megapixel digital camera, too.

    I wonder what qualifies as low-megapixel these days. If 4M is low enough, this would be a nice prize. 

  • 05-20-2007 9:51 AM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    asuffield:

    I don't know if they're actually manufactured any more, but the Nokia 1100 is still on the market. I just love the looks on the faces of all these people with their fancy camera "smartphones", when I tell them that I charge my cellphone once a fortnight and never run out of power.

     

    I have a nokia 6015i.  When people tell me about all their schmancy phone features I say "oh yeah, does it do this?" and throw my phone on the ground.  I've had the thing actually break in two (I dropped it, but by accident, not as a demonstration) and I just re-clicked the two halves together and it didn't even lose signal. 

  • 05-21-2007 8:11 AM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Are you effing kidding me?!?!  A 4.1MP SLR?!  What's wrong with the world today?  I mean, I've got a Digital Rebel XT, and I'm about ready to spring for a full frame camera as soon as I have that kind of money to waste...
  • 05-21-2007 2:44 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Atrophy:
    Are you effing kidding me?!?!  A 4.1MP SLR?!  What's wrong with the world today?  I mean, I've got a Digital Rebel XT, and I'm about ready to spring for a full frame camera as soon as I have that kind of money to waste...

    What use do you have for a full-frame camera?  If you're shooting for National Geographic, I can understand needing that sort of resolution.  Otherwise, you're just wasting your money.
  • 05-21-2007 2:57 PM In reply to

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Carnildo:
    Atrophy:
    Are you effing kidding me?!?! A 4.1MP SLR?! What's wrong with the world today? I mean, I've got a Digital Rebel XT, and I'm about ready to spring for a full frame camera as soon as I have that kind of money to waste...

    What use do you have for a full-frame camera? If you're shooting for National Geographic, I can understand needing that sort of resolution. Otherwise, you're just wasting your money.

    It might be less a matter of resolution (I speculate) than it is what you can shoot. The 1.6x crop factor makes what would be a rather wide-angle lens (say the one that comes with the camera at 17mm) into only a moderately wide-angle lens (27mm). For instance, I can't take a picture of my bedroom because I don't have a wide enough shot. Something like the 50mm prime lens, which is already a little long in general for what I've wanted to shoot (at least indoors), becomes 78mm, which is starting to stray into telephoto, and a lot of the time is outright unusable because the field of view is too narrow. (Again, especially for indoors shooting. Outdoors, there are plenty of things you can do at that focal length, but inside you start running into walls.) Shooting full frame gets you your field of view back.

    Now, this is complicated by the fact that people tend to use shorter lenses with digital cameras. For instance, the Digital Rebel's kit lens (17-55) won't fit onto a full-frame camera without modification to the lens. For instance, the Canon T2's kit lens is a 28-90mm one, which by a curious "coincidence", has almost exactly the same range of field of view as the Digital Rebel's. The (Canon) digital shooter's best defense against this cropping, the Canon 10-22, is another lens that won't work on a full-frame camera out of the box (and for which there isn't a full-frame version that is the same focal length), though supposedly you can use this one with minimal changes starting from about 14mm. So the difference in what lenses are standard and what you can use minimize this difference somewhat, but at the same time, I don't think there's a lens in Canon's line that's sort of a digital equivalent to their ultra-cheap ($80) 50mm/f1.8 lens. There's a 35mm lens, but it's ~$230. (Though you'll still save money there over getting a full-frame camera, but whatever...)
     

  • 05-21-2007 6:12 PM In reply to

    • Worf
    • Not Ranked
    • Joined on 05-15-2007
    • Posts 14

    Re: Runner up prizes?

    Too bad that unlike most technology, full-frame sensors are more or less a fixed-price technology. The resolution will go WAY up, but the raw cost of the sensor stays the same, until much slower evolutions in silicon process technology happen.

    You see, a full-frame sensor has a specific size (35x24mm), which means your silicon substrate (also of a specific size, typically 12cm or 30cm - in the 30-odd years of IC manufacturing technology, the biggest move was to 30cm wafers, and that was in the 90s) can only make a certain number of them. So the gross yield is always the same. Unlike say, a modern digital IC, where every 18 months, we progress to a new technology level (130nm, 95nm, 65nm...) thus increasing gross yields, and thus, net yields, making each chip cheaper to make.

     Analog technology doesn't move that fast, and full-frame sensors take up so much silicon area that they're just plain expensive in the first place. Especially if you don't want dead pixels (there are around maybe 10-12 on the average APS-sized sensor - which, BTW, Nikon uses (always a strict 1.5x crop, none of this 1.4, 1.3, 1.6 crap Canon pulls - WTF? Pick a sensor size and stick with it!)), so they'll always be expensive.

    But for cameras, it's not resolution, but pixel size. An SLR can take better photos much easier than a point and shoot merely because the cells are bigger and thus, less noisy. (One of the reasons why point and shoots have such noticable photo patterns is because of the extreme denoising the 5+MP ones must do with their 1/2" or smaller sensors, nevermind how to get glass that good for a sensor that small).
     

Page 1 of 1 (16 items)
Powered by Community Server (Non-Commercial Edition), by Telligent Systems