Canon 60D – Review

Canon is one of the top of the line producers of photography essentials, including the obvious: cameras. In the ever growing market for DSLR cameras, the Canon 60D stands out as the bridge between consumer and professional pieces of hardware.

I have been using my Canon 60D for over a year now, and I have not been disappointed once. As both a filmmaker and a photographer, the camera easily encompasses all of my needs. With an 18 Megapixel sensor, the camera has the same quality of sensor as the next step up in the line, the Canon 7D. While the next step down is the slightly less customizable, but more user-friendly Canon Rebel series. Having used both the upper and lower models, I have to say that my preference is still towards the 60D. One of the biggest factors for me personally is the versatility in the filming modes of the camera. Frame rates and recording quality are all easily accessible and adjustable. Another pleased customer supports this in their review on Amazon.com.

From a photography aspect, the camera is just as easily accessible with many different settings for beginners or professionals. On the extremely user friendly end is the “AUTO” setting. This allows for anyone to pick up the camera, point and shoot with no setting adjustments. For someone who wants complete control of the camera, however, there is a full “MANUAL” setting which allows you to adjust each individual aspect of the photo. This is held up by the kind folks of B&H Photo.com in their review of the product.

Overall, the Canon 60D brings together all of the great aspects of both consumer and professional DSLR cameras, marrying the two together with simple elegance. I would recommend this camera to any beginner or professional looking for either an upgrade or just a backup camera.

Voter Turnout

Voter turnout since the first election has been a fluctuating and often unpredictable trend. There have been years where upwards of 80% of people went out to vote. Other years, as little as 50% attended. It has been often stated recently that the amount of people voting has increased. The data used to support this argument is the Voting Age Population (VAP). The VAP takes into its count all legal citizens that are of legal voting age, but also illegal aliens, federal prisoners and any people who have died since the most recent VAP was collected. This allows for a margin of error in all of its data as not all eligible people will turn up to vote.

Since 1960, the eligible amount of voters has more than doubled from 109,672,000 to 230,782,000 in 2008. The amount of citizens that actually cast their votes in the election during these respective years was 68,838,204 in 1960 and 132,645,504 in 2008. While this seemingly obviously shows that more people are voting, it is misleading. The population increase that America has seen is tremendous, making it so that more people vote than ever before. But as a percent of voters against the entire population, the percent of American citizens who voted in 1960 was more than in 2008. 62.77% of eligible voters turned out in the 1960 election while despite the apparently larger number of voters, only 57.48% showed up in 2008.

Many people are stating that voter turnout has gone up in recent years since the 2008 election of Barack Obama and John McCain due to the advent of social media. To determine whether or not this is accurate, one must backtrack a few years to an earlier election and observe the voting trends between the years before and after social media took hold. In the 1996 election of Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole, only a pitiful 49.08% of eligible voters cast their vote in the election. Four years later, when George W. Bush ran against Al Gore, 51.3% of eligible voters turned out. This is hardly noticeable as an increase and not enough to make an argument that anything much has changed. In both 2004 and 2008 the voting turnout increased fairly more to 55.27% and then to 57.48%. The jump in 2008 is often thrown to the fact that social media became more prevalent and a bigger means for campaigning. However, in 2012, a year when social media is even more prevalent than 2008, voting percent went down exponentially. Therefore, there seems to not be an obvious correlation between the two means as of now.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/turnout.php#axzz2j7HMKCOf

Generation Y…The Greatest? Survey Results

When receiving the responses for my survey, I must say that I’m not really that surprised. The majority of the data that I collected concurred my opinion that our generation is by far not one of the greatest. The data reflects an overall sense of fear to remove oneself from the comforts of home and guidance/paychecks of parents, a sense of accepted laziness and lack of proactive behavior and a general lack of faith in our own generation. This conforms much of what the video that we watched in class on our generation told. However, with any majority, there is a minority. Those few who are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve success. These are the people who lead generations into the future and the history books. Perhaps one day, members of our generation will do something that will radically alter the course of society for the better, but until then, my opinion rests.

Chapter 1-3 Summary

In the first three chapters of Eric Qualman’s book, “Socialnomics”, the most prevalent or outstanding idea to me is that of word of mouth to world of mouth. We live in an age of useless information and endless sources of communication. Despite whether or not someone believes that this is a good or bad thing, one thing is for sure: getting our thoughts and advertisements out to the world has never been so easy. One celebrity can have upwards of a million followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook. Within seconds, any sort of unfiltered thought could be read by millions of people. But of course, the chain doesn’t end there. Those readers could all retweet that same thought or idea, making it spread like wildfire.

The way that information used to be passed on was called word of mouth. This simply means that if you tell your one friend something, they may tell two friends and then those two friends tell five more friends. But with the advent of social media, one thing can go instantly from one person to a million or more, leading to the term being changed to “world of mouth”. This can have both positive and negative repercussions. On the positive side, this allows a smaller company or artist get their name out there even if they can’t afford traditional methods of advertising. On the other hand, if something incriminating or negative comes out, there’s no taking it back. Even if you delete the post, people have already has been taken as a screenshot and retweeted it thousands of times in some high profile cases.

Overall, this new world of mouth method has some obvious advantages and disadvantages. While we can make use of it to help ourselves, some people might not be so proactive. No matter what you use it for, you should have a solid understanding of the term and the consequences before you ever post anything online.

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One Day Without Technology Results…LOL

Well, this was an interesting and depressing experience overall. I think that my presumed dependence on today’s technology can now be affirmed…

I decided to do this assignment yesterday, seeing as I had no plans other than work and catching a movie. So, work was easy. Go, do the work, no phone. Pie. So that got me up to 11:45 when I was at the theater to see the new film “Prisoners” (Best thriller since “Silence of the Lambs” for the record). I’m in a theater and I hate people who use their phones so it’s easy. The movie was quite long, so I come out at around 2:30pm and decide to finally check the reviews that I’ve been holding out on reading. Only once my mom pointed out in the car that I wasn’t supposed to use my phone did I realize it. And there you have it!

So, I guess I made it from 6am-2pm. Sad. Pathetic. I’m lost without my iPhone! This was a fantastic experiment and really shed a bit too much light on my craving for the latest news and others’ opinions. Maybe one day I can become a lot more self dependent again. Until then, I have to check my Facebook.

Appropriate/Catchy Title (24 Hours…Without Technology…LOL)

Do I really think that I can go one day without any use of a phone or a computer…not really. I’ll be honest, what I do in my spare time (when not with friends) revolves around techonolohy. Editing films, photos, promoting things on social media. But then again, I used to go my whole life until a few months ago without a phone, so I could probably do it. (I Think?)

I would probably choose to do this experiment on a weekday where I will be in school or work until after 8pm. If I really wanted to go hard on this, though, I’d pick a weekend day and go 24 hours without any technology. Kick it Bear Grylls style.

Overall this should be an interesting experiment whether I make it or not!

 

Social Media + Me

When did you first join a social media site and what was it?
The first social media site that I ever was a member of was MySpace (Don’t judge, it was cool once.) YouTube has also been a site that I have been a prt of since at least 6th grade to post my films and videos. The site wasn’t really social media back then, but it has shifted towards it now.

-How often do you use social media on a daily basis?
I use social media extensively on a daily basis. I need to keep up to date on my YouTube to see how my films are doing, check Facebook to see if photos and my Tyler Welch Photography page are getting the likes I want and also posting on each of these pages.

-Do you believe the trend in social media growth and youth participation is just a fad or is it here to stay? Why or why not?
The way people interact has such a new dynamic since the creation of social media. It really has become quantity over quality. I have 700+ friends on Facebook. The majority of them I have probably never met. It will take something dramatic to shake the world free of the social media buzz.

-Do you feel social media should play a role in education? How so?
I think that it depends on what sort of role in education. I believe that students should have the option to take a course like this one so that they can educate themselves about the power and also moral or even physical consequences of the userfriendly software they’re dealing with on a regular basis.

-What expectations do you have for this class?
To help get an understanding about what it is that social media does for us as young people that make us cling to it so desperately.