Orange you glad I didn’t say “Mass Effect”

Having survived my weekend review marathon (and all the distractions in the weeks leading up to it), life can finally resume some semblance of normalcy. That means Cat and I are updating BakeSpite again. Huzzah and all that. I figured it bears mentioning here, because the post I put together last night seems like the sort of thing the readership of GameSpite might enjoy. It’s about Japanese snacks, you see — but not Pocky, because that’s boring. Please read it and comment! Our food blog is very lonely — it gets excellent traffic but desperately needs conversation.

This also marks the debut of the new camera we picked up to replace my Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot. It was fine for what it was, but what with Cat being an actual photographer who uses actual DSLR cameras for her work, I figured I needed something a bit nicer if I want to keep up with her contributions. You can easily spot the difference in quality between her photos for BakeSpite to date (they’re nice) and mine (they suck), and the camera is one part of that. (Not the only part, of course; she’s also teaching me to light properly and to color-correct.) We picked up a Canon Powershot G11, and it is pretty incredible — technically it’s a point and shoot, but I believe it’s classified as “prosumer.” It doesn’t have an SLR lens assembly, but otherwise it offers all the fine controls of a DSLR. In fact, it offers some dynamic gamut and color balance feedback that Cat’s 5D lacks. I particularly like the fact that Canon decreased the megapixel count from its previous models but left the CCD the same size — the resultant improvement in sensor quality makes for a picture that looks much better at large sizes than something shot with a camera with a higher MP count and greater CCD density. I’m pretty well in love with this little guy.

(Incidentally, I have a used Sony Cybershot for sale, cheap.)

Also, I really liked the photo above, but was forbidden from using it on BakeSpite. Something about the fingerprints visible in the chocolate making Cat want to throw up, I guess. If you experience a similar response, please remember to turn your face away from the computer before vomiting. In the future, I will be certain to refrigerate chocolate (and my hands) before handling it for photography to minimize the nauseation.

8 thoughts on “Orange you glad I didn’t say “Mass Effect”

  1. I’m FAR more likely to comment over on Bakespite if you guys would start delivering delicious snacks to my door. Just sayin’.

  2. No worries, though I guess it was because the matter of flavored KitKats has been one of interest that I commented over on BakeSpite.

    I’m betting your next post will have something to do with impressions regarding the iPad announcement. That aside though, you never did get to your #1 in ’09. What happened there?

  3. For Christmas my family got the same Canon camera as you. It’s definitely great and much better than the 2-megapixel camera we’ve had for far too long… even if I don’t understand half of the controls that are built into it yet!

  4. Good choice with the G11 – those types of “prosumer” cameras are a good compromise between “better than a point & shoot” and “less expensive/complicated than a DSLR.” Which of course is why I have one, too.

    Since you asked nicely, I’ll add BakeSpite to my list of sites to visit every morning, rather than just waiting for you to point something out here. (I like what you’re doing over there, btw.)

    …oh, and I second falselogic’s question about the Talking about Photography section for Talking Time. ;-)

  5. If there was a photography section on TT I would be so all up on that shit all day.

    It’s funny… I accrued about 800 posts on TT over nearly two years, and then the food section showed up a couple weeks ago and now I’m at about 950. There are some things which I prioritize far above games, apparently.

    But yeah, good choice of camera. It seems like 2009 was really the year that point-and-shoots came into their own as serious photographic tools. I stopped using them a couple years ago when I switched to DSLR, but now I kind of want one again. The Canon G11 and S90 look great.

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