LEDs replacing cigarette lighters? That’s what wound up spinning through my brain as I watched the Kaiser Chiefs play at the Queens’ College May Ball.
Not as firestarters, mind. I’m talkin’ cigarette lighters as rock-ballad accoutrements, i.e. glowing objects to be held aloft whenever the band plays a song you like. Because that’s what happened last night, thanks to the whole cameraphone / digital camera scene. Stuck towards the back, I could spot each and every viewfinder that popped up above the crowd — they looked like little glowing blue things, jumping and hopping to the music — until, poof, they’d go down for a few minutes and other consumer electronics would take their place.
You gotta wonder what that looks like from the rockstar’s perspective. They don’t see the screens. Instead, it’s half the crowd stomping and going wild, the other half apparently content to stand still and show you their phones….
Anyhow. Haven’t had time to read that book about the Wisdom of Crowds, but I’ve heard the gist of it, and so last night I made sure to hoist my own Sony K750i in the air, and waved it like I just didn’t care. Coincidentally, I bought the thing only yesterday, primarily because it’s the first 2-megapixel camera phone on the market. The pictures it takes of a Cambridge May Ball look something like this:
No, not great, but then, lighting was low and there wasn’t time to RTFM. But there’s something I love about the constraints, here. I know that visually, it’s like you’re shooting with Kodak Disc film and a pinhole camera. Yet both the form factor and media format are so impulse-friendly that without a cameraphone I doubt these pictures would have been taken. And they capture plenty of the moment, at least for me.
Speaking of which: May Balls, wow. That’s quite a bit of extravagance for a collegiate get-together; it was like an All-American high-school prom mated with the Opening Ceremonies at the Olympics. Yes, the Kaiser Chiefs were the big act, but like a circus, there were other acts in other tents, which ranged from jazz to classical to hip-hop and hippie. Throw in a shiatsu room, a Moon Bounce, a velcro wall, tea tasting, hookahs, Bellinis, burritos, swing boats, fireworks, and a free-alcohol-free-food-free-everything policy that would make even a Las Vegas casino nervous, and you start to get the picture. Definitely the wildest black-tie event I’ve ever been to.
(The Magdalene May Ball is white-tie. I won’t even guess at what goes on, there.)
I wandered home at dawn, which isn’t as late/early as it sounds. The sun goes down at 10:30, now, and is up again within six hours. That, I just love.
Update: Since a fair number of people arrive here looking for more info on the Sony K750i, I’ve added some higher-resolution snaps taken under bright light, which is where the built-in camera really shines.
I’ve knocked the sizes from the native 1600x1200 to 800x600 in Photoshop in most samples, as I think that’s a more realistic example of what you’d mail to friends or post on the web. I’ve noticed that the pictures also tend to look much better that way — there’s a type of pixel noise in the full-size pictures that becomes a lot less noticeable at email-friendly sizes. I also include a ‘tweaked’ version of the picture that’s received minor Photoshop manipulation (i.e., Unsharp Mask, Levels, etc.) to punch things up a bit.
Cath Kidson Bags example: Full Size, 800x600 (natural), 800x600 (enhanced)
Antique Iron: Full Size, 800x600 (natural), 800x600 (enhanced)
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