A Full Update. Sort of...

Well, I'm up late editing baby pictures, and honestly...it's the one thing I don't mind staying up late for.  Unfortunately, it is a common thing, but you their sweet little faces and baby expressions make 3am late nights not too terrible.

Anyhow...this afternoon I figured I would take a few pictures of the house while it is still kind of clean.  We had family over over the weekend, and so most things are in their place...certainly not all, but most.  (I know people understand that houses and anything really is constantly a work in progress, but I get so self conscious about anyone seeing any of my half-done projects from everything to designing ads at work to framing a picture...I don't like to show anyone until it is totally done, so that's why I am constantly talking about everything not being done.)

Instead of taking pictures, though, I had the brilliant idea of taking a video.  And because I'm always up for a challenge and learning new things, I decided to film it with my Nikon D90 SLR.  I don't use this camera for clients or any professional work, and it is a bit older of a camera, but it is often my go to SLR for personal stuff.  It also has video capabilities, and was actually one of the first digital SLR cameras with video.  I've had this camera since the day it came out, and I have never once used the video feature aside from possibly the first day...and even then I don't think I did.  So, I thought it would be fun to mess around with it.

The video is all manual focus (well, at least I think...if there is a way to autofocus the video, I'm not aware of it) and of course I decided to throw my huge Nikon 14-24mm lens on the camera so I could get everything in the picture.  Of course, on the D90, the 14-24 isn't really 14-24 because it isn't a full frame camera, but this is a house blog and I'll save the detailed photography talk for my photography blog.

So, I had issues manually focusing and being able to see on the little LCD if I was in focus or not while moving...definitely not what I'm used to.  Also, turning the focus ring on a large, heavy lens while walking and trying not to bobble too much is pretty difficult for me.  So, because I'm more of the trial and error type I just went for it without practicing first.  Of course, that didn't fair too well, and the video is super choppy, and the commentary I gave during the video didn't exactly sound too hot, so I deleted it and re-recorded new commentary in iMovie.  Unfortunately, it would have taken years (4 hours to be precise) to upload the video in HD, so I ended up uploading it to youtube in standard definition...which kind of defeats the purpose of using my SLR for HD quality, but hopefully it still looks decent.

So, here's the video...including my very annoying voice, awkward commentary and the even more awkward times when I wave at the camera in the mirror.  A few things I felt needed to be commented on from the video:

• Yes, I do say that videos are easier than pictures and words.  What I really meant was I am not a very good writer and hopefully a video can do the talking better than I can.
• I snicker at a lot of my comments, because as soon as I say them I realize how silly they are.
• In the video, I say the quotation book is from the mid 19th century...it's not...which you can tell by the death dates next to the authors on the page I zoom in on where one of the quotation author's death is listed as 1924...so, it clearly wasn't published in the mid 19th century.  I think it's actually from 1940ish or so.
• Everything in the video looks a bit more neon than it is in real life...

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