Hrm, I just had a flashback from your post there Bob and it got me thinking. I remember about 10 years ago being mocked because I with to a 'lesser' University for Electrical Engineering. I went because they offered a scholarship and I'm not 'from money'. The few people I knew / met who went to the 'better' school often stated that they were smarter / better than me for going there and would enquire why I would go to the 'other' school if I was actually intelligent.

When doing my masters degree, at the same school, and after getting my research published and a patent it happened again. An undergraduate student from the 'better' University found out that I was at the 'lesser' school. It didn't matter that I was the one in charge of the project, he thought he was superior to me after 1 year of undergraduate training. I was working in a lab associated with their prestigious University.

Finally, before coming to UK for my Doctorate in Engineering Science, I was told by someone I had recently met that their undergraduate university rated higher in Engineering so they were smarter than me and that no matter what I did now I would never make up for the difference in our Undergraduate institutions. Yes, someone said this. And yes, this is someone from the same school again (University of Toronto should anyone care to know).

People really seem to have a need to associate themselves with brand names in order to feel special.

I suppose the reason I like taking Photo's of people / sports with friends in it. Unfortunately, I'm a private person and don't like people knowing who I am if I can avoid it.

I'm sure that some government agencies will be easily able to track what I've done and couldn't care - I just don't want employers / people I will deal with in a professional setting to be able to punch my name into google and boom, there I am and oh I like taking photo's of XYZ. That's why my name isn't on this site under personal information. It's the problem with having a unique last name. My Facebook settings are locked way down, so I never worry about non-friends finding anything on me.

Well there is a Mac Vs. PC debate.

Also: BMW / Merc / Audi would be similar to Canon/Nikon/Pentax with Audi offering more things for the money, but the other two having more wow factor.

As I was editing and exporting stuff for Facebook, I got to wondering if Facebook has possibly been a driving factor behind some of the pushes in consumer/prosumer level cameras the last few years.

Oddly enough it's one of the things that has made me want to take more photo's. It's far easier to get an 'emotional reward' through the comments posted by friends and family on your photos.

Thoughts?

Wish it did... I'm unfunded right now!

Worth a laugh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YX2GnnHU20

Times are changing very fast. There will be a place for stills for a very long time but video is on the upward trend. Right now it's only the pro's who can make production quality (read being able to sell for decent money) videos - whereas that was the case for good stills 25-30 years ago.

3 patients done in 1.5 hours. 38 left to go, gah!

I'm just about to sit down for 12 hours of drawing circular things on top of other circular like things. Shoot me now.

As Gartmore suggested - the quality of bokeh is entirely a factor of the lens. That's why certain lenses, even if they are manual focus, go for so much money.

Also, I just sold a 24mm which got softer when I stopped it down. Turned out I was a moron and I had a finger print on the back glass - which meant that the higher the F-stop, the more in focus my finger print was. Gave her a very careful clean and she behaved beautifully afterwards.

Holy crap - I'm gutted I missed this. Let me know if anyone actually receives their product. Man!