"If You Ever Get the Chance to Go to Dallas..."

"...Take it from me, pass it by." ~Jimmy Buffett


As we speak, I am sitting in the airport in Dallas/Fort Worth, with about an hour left before I'm leavin' on a jet plane for Sin City. The flight over here was uneventful -- the best kind of flight. I did have to pay a staggering $129 to check my luggage: $25 for checking a 2nd bag, $100 for my first bag weighing 88 pounds, and $4 (+ tip) for the kind lad who checked me in curbside. At least I didn't have to pay for my airfare, and hopefully I will be able to invoice PokerNews for these expenses as well. I managed to get a seat change to a spot in an exit row, something my long legs were thanking me for by the time we landed. Regardless of my seating assignment, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of leg and hip room in the MD-S80. From here to Vegas, it's a 757, my very favorite aircraft of the modern travel era.

As soon as we were wheels up from Raleigh, I was overcome by a certain sensation of relief and relaxation. I can't quite explain it, but I have been dying to get out of North Carolina for a couple months now. I have this craving to go elsewhere, any elsewhere at all, really. Like a pregnant woman craving a midnight bowl of chocolate ice cream. And it's not that I don't like North Carolina; at the very least, it's completely tolerable. There are most definitely worse places in the country to call home. And I don't think I need to move away from there necessarily. But something about it -- my living situation, my financial situation, or just my mental situation -- has been driving me absolutely bonkers.

*Interesting. They just made an announcement over the terminal intercom that there is about to be a worship service at 11am across from gate D21. It is Sunday in the south, you know. I don't think I'm going to make it...

Anyways, this time I have in the West will be a welcome respite from the mind-numbing monotony of Durham. I look very much forward to meeting new people, seeing old friends again, and working my ass off in an attempt to impress my new employers. Free time will be scarce, and I'm not exactly going to be glued to my computer on my days off. But I will try and keep updates and photos coming as my schedule and brain allows.

Finally, big ups to my boy Chris, who is picking me up from the airport. Chris has been an online poker buddy of mine since I started playing almost four years ago. He was one of the original members of our little posse that included him, myself, Dallas, Glenn, and the now-defunct Tim. I have met Dallas and Glenn on a few different occasions, and will see both of them at one point or another on this trip. But I still have yet to meet Chris. Despite that, he has graciously offered me a ride from the airport and a place to stay until I can move into Le Château du PokerNews. Who could ask for more? Even more remarkably, his girlfriend recently got a job at the Duke Hospital, and he is moving to the Triangle at the beginning of July. So I am looking forward to meeting him now, and making him feel as at home in Raleigh as he has already made me feel in Vegas, and I'm not even there yet. Big ups.

First Stop: New Orleans

I have just returned from my first assignment for PokerNews, covering the Bayou Poker Challenge live from Harrah's New Orleans. The series of tournaments ran from May 9th through May 21st, and is part of the World Series of Poker Circuit. Events ranged from the $200 Ladies Only tournament all the way up to the $5,000 Circuit Championship event that took place over the last three days. The final event saw a field of 249 players and was won by a demolition contractor from Georgia, Nick Ceci, who took home $382,928 for his efforts. Not bad for three days of work. If you're interested, you can check out the three days of reports that we wrote live from the tournament floor here. Anything that says "FerricRamsium" was written by yours truly.

I had an absolute blast in New Orleans. Don't interpret that statement as meaning that I liked it there. I didn't. Before I rip into the city, I should include a disclaimer that I didn't get to see an awful lot of it; we were confined to about a six block radius around Harrah's. But the parts I did see were quite, quite dirty. It appears that the restaurants and businesses in the downtown area put their garbage on the street at night for pickup, so the whole city has a bit of a funk to it. Like a marriage of food, saltwater, and garbage. I can just imagine how much worse it gets in the dead, wet heat of midsummer. And then there are the homeless people, the druggies, and the hookers, who seem to be all over the place. I would walk by a world-class restaurant, and half a block away is a homeless guy sitting on a piece of newspaper, and a drugged-out hooker handing her makeshift business card out to anyone passing by. Pretty seedy.

And then there's the people. First impressions were actually positive. As I walked from the jetway down to the baggage claim, there was a group of musicians playing some excellent Dixieland, New Orleans style jazz music. It's hard not to smile broadly and move your feet a little bit when you're entertained like that in your first moments in a new city. Sadly though, the novelty wore off about the time I climbed into a cab and set out towards downtown. My cab driver, I swear, spoke some incomprehensible bastardization of English, French, and Spanish. I think I am generally pretty good at understanding and communicating with people, but literally -- literally -- I did not understand one single solitary word that he said to me in the 15-minute cab ride to the hotel. And quite the cab ride it was. Never have I actually felt that I might realistically die in a cab before that little excursion from hell. Our poor-speaking friend was about as adept at driving as he was at forming coherent sentences. We were going over 90 MPH, changing lanes and cutting people off as if the lines on the road don't apply to us. It's really hard to put into words how frightful a ride it was.

Finally, we made it to the spot. Harrah's seemed almost out of place amidst all the grunge surrounding it. The casino is well-designed and full of friendly, hard-working people. The staff involved in running the tournament were extremely accommodating and professional. As the days went on, I began to realize what a large production they were running there, and they pulled it off as smoothly as I could imagine. Thoroughly impressed.

How to Buy a Camera

So, you're starting to shop for a DSLR? What should you look for? Well, let me just tell you. I have no special qualifications, and I too am new to this whole world. So why would you want to read what I have to say? You might not, but I was recently in this boat, and I did a lot -- a LOT -- of research before I made my decision. And that decision was... (*drumroll*)... ... to buy a Nikon D80. This is a wonderful mid-level DSLR from arguably the top camera maker in the world. Canon users just closed this browser window. But if you have an open mind, read on.

So... let's see, why did I pick this camera? I am indecisive by nature, so this was immensely difficult for me. First, and most important: The thing fits in my hand. Like a spandex glove. Like a teddy bear in a toddler's hand.

The DSLR market is as crowded as a New York tunnel on a Friday rush hour. This oversaturation has led to great competition amongst the Big 5 makers: Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, and Sony. As a result, you'll find very comparable models across those brands at a given price point, and it's hard to go wrong feature-wise no matter which brand or model you choose these days, even with the so-called "entry-level" DSLR's. Differences in resolution, shooting modes, sharpness, contrast, low-light performance, and overall feature set will be negligible, if even measurable at all. This will cause you to go insane. Trust me. If you're at all like me, you shop carefully and use as many resources as you can to compare products right down to the screws before you make the absolute perfect purchase. The problem is, you can get so consumed with feature crunching that you begin to miss the proverbial forest for the trees. It's a sickness. Megapixels, shutter lag, maximum flash sync speed, metering modes, autofocus points, image stabilization, and on and on and on it goes. Before long, you're nitpicking so closely, that you begin to lose sight of the overall product you are buying. It is important not to get caught up in this mindset. At least for you and me, people just beginning to enter the realm of serious photography. That sort of scrutinty is for the pros who really need to squeeze every last drop out of their equipment.

However, there is one big thing that does change noticeably as you change brands. Ergonomics. Say it with me now, "er-go-NOM-ics". For me, the Nikon just felt right. This is not to say that it would feel right for you. The mottled finish, while not especially attractive, is easy to grip and feels quite durable. The buttons and dials are all very responsive and also feel quite solidly-built. The only slight exception is the "delete" button, which is just marginally more difficult to fully depress than the other soft buttons. It is the same with every different D80 I've held, so I am certain it's not unique to my camera. This may be a feature which was designed in, or it may just be a quirk; either way, it's not even a big enough issue to be considered an issue at all. I looked at the D40 first, and it was just a touch small for my gargantuan hands. So I grabbed a D80, and found that it was easy to grip, comfortable to hold, and convenient to operate.

This was not at all my impression of the Canon models. In particular, the four-way button on the back felt cheap and prone to wear. And the jog dials for shutter speed and aperture were easy to use -- too easy to use. They felt loose and disconnected from the mechanical workings of the camera. I must say, Canon's exterior fit and finish is more attractive to look at than Nikon's. But, what are you doing looking at your camera? When you grab hold of it, the smooth, shiny plastic feels sort of generic and amateurish.

Remember this: The most important thing you can do when buying a DSLR is to hold each model you are considering in your own two hands. Look at them. Feel them. Fondle, caress them. Run through the menus a few times. How does it feel? You're about to spend a good chunk of cash for a little piece of technology, so it better feel right. As I mentioned, features and abilities are a virtual dead heat between all of the major brands. And you can have all the features you want, but if the camera is not comfortable to hold and use, not ergonomically friendly, well guess what. You're not going to use it. You're just not. It's going to sit right there in its lonely bag all the time, like a neglected pair of plaid bell-bottoms. You won't even bother pulling it out, unless you have no other options. And you'll certainly never get around to exploring its full range of features and how best to make use of them. Not a good investment of your money. Pick the right camera for your hands though, and you'll actively look for any excuse you can find to bring it out, even if it's only for 1 or 2 quick shots. It will be your comfortable little trinket. Like your favorite pair of well-worn blue jeans. I can't stress this enough, buy the camera that fits best in your hands, and you simply can not go wrong.

How to Improve Your Photographs, Part I

Budding photographers out there, anyone? All right... anyone at least like looking at purdy pictures? As far as artistic expressions go, photography is probably the second most persuasive form to me, behind only music. Until recently, I was just your average Eric. I had a pretty cool digital camera that came with a nice little leather case. Press "ON", glance at the LCD screen, pretty the big shiny button. "Click" goes the electronic shutter soundy thingy. I'd pull it out 6 or 8 times a year, whenever something important happened. Grandma's birthday. The new puppy. Vacation at the Grand Canyon. And it had a movie mode. Flippin' sweet!

The quality and usability of "point-and-shoot" digital cameras is increasing exponentially as the price points continue to become more and more reasonable. A friend of mine recently bought a Canon PowerShot G9, a fantastically capable, 12.1 MP beauty of a compact for under $500 -- quite a lot cheaper than the earliest 1 MP atrocities of yesteryear. These all-in-one cameras really are everything and more than most people will ever need. They offer the ability to take attractive photos straight out of the box, with incredible depth of field, sharpness, and brilliant, highly-saturated colors that jump off the page. Add that movie mode, a few manual settings, and a little built-in flash, and you have yourself a grab-and-go setup that will fulfill most of what you'll ever want to do with a camera.

That camera of mine that I was referring to a minute ago is a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H2; not an astounding piece of technology by any means, but it is more than capable of producing eye-catching results with minimal effort. And it certainly serves me well.

Served me well, that is. Most of the time. Until I wanted to use it in some challenging circumstances. Take it outside on a sunny day, point it at the scenery and start shooting. It really produces nice pictures -- rich in color, well-focused, and relatively sharp to boot. But just try taking shots at night, or indoors in poor lighting, or even in high-powered mixed lighting like you'll find at sporting events. The results are, well, less than stellar:

These cameras are called "compact" for a reason: everything is small. This is desirable for a lot of things, but the one aspect of cameras where size really does matter is in the image sensor -- the CMOS or CCD chip that directly captures the color and light information your lens is gathering and converts it to a digital representation of the scene. With compact cameras, you get a compact sensor. It may produce a big number of megapixels, but the physical size of the chip limits the amount of light information it can gather. This is not so much of an issue out in the bright sunshine, where light is plentiful. But it drastically reduces the low-light performance of these cameras. What you'll get when you try to enlarge this information to viewable size is a lot of noise, that is, bits of incomplete and innacurate color scattered throughout the photo like technicolor dust.

In my search to improve my own photographs, I stumbled onto a great resource. There is a fantastic forum at DPReview, the internet's best resource for all things photographic. You should most certainly visit this site and have a look around if you are at all interested in photography (and I assume you are, if you've made it this far into the post). But not yet, finish reading this first.

CAUTION: The aforementioned website will damage your bank account. Beyond recognition. You've been warned.

When you start to spend some time loitering around forums full of top-notch photographers, you begin to get a much clearer picture (*groan*) of what constitutes a good photograph, and the process involved in producing pleasing images. Composition and the ability to correctly light and frame your subject are paramount. By reading a couple short books, browsing a few knowledgeable forum topics, or executing a quick Wiki search, you can learn a great deal about good compositional technique -- simple things that will make an immediate difference in how your shots turn out, even with the most basic of cameras. But regardless of how much technique you have, if your camera is not up to the task of replicating what you are seeing, it's of no use. So what is the solution?

If you're planning to get serious about photography, you are going to have to put your point-and-shoot in a box and forget about it. I'm sorry, I know you love it. However, besides the sensor size limitations, the user-friendly approach that makes these cameras so desirable to some takes many of the photographic decisions out of your hands. This can be a good thing if you don't know much about the mechanics of taking a picture; the camera does much of the work for you. The problem is, it doesn't always make the same decisions as a capable photographer would. It tries to read your mind and guess what you were trying to capture when you pressed its shiny button. And as I mentioned, it may do fine in strong static lighting, but when pushed to the limits of light and motion, it will struggle mightily. Nope, your point-and-shoot just isn't going to cut it. For your convenience, I've included a link to Craig's List so that you can just go ahead and get rid of it right now. If you truly want to take great pictures, you won't be using it again.

What you need is a DSLR, a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. These cameras are not particularly cheap, they're not pocket-size, they don't have movie mode, and you can't even use the nice LCD screen to set up your shot before you take it. They are good at one thing, and that is taking pictures. Damn good ones.

The DSLR's larger body allows plenty of room for sophisticated sensors, meters, and optics. With their larger image sensor size, they can accurately gather more colors, and in doing so produce images which have far less noise than their smaller point-and-shoot cousins. The second big advantage of a DSLR is the ability to change lenses for any given situation. The zoom lens on your compact does fine, again, in most situations. But it's not particularly adept at any one thing. When you buy a DSLR, you open up a whole world of optics, from extreme wide angle and fisheye, to extreme telephoto, and from consumer-level glass to pro-grade, big-bucks, pristine gear. It makes your camera infintely customizable. In fact, the camera body is the less important part of the DSLR equation; it is purchased mainly as a place to attach a wicked awesome lens. In the next few posts, I'll start to dissect the features of my new camera (I should probably tell you what I bought first) and give some general thoughts about what I like and dislike about it. Stay tuned.