quickly comparing photos by a digital camera from 2004 and a smartphone from 2022

Clickbait title: does OLD DIGITAL CAMERA beat SAMSUNG SMART PHONE!? 

I got around to getting the CR-V3 batteries I mentioned before and they really did make the camera work properly. No longer having to shake it just to hope that the batteries manage to keep proper contact to the case, assuming they haven't been drained already. 

I decided to take some shots with it and my phone to see in what ways they meaningfully differ. Which, as it turns out, is many. 

(Digital camera to the left, phone camera to the right)

(im not fixing the weird alignment issue)

The most apparent difference are the colors. The digital camera has a much warmer tone, which I appreciate, as it makes the images feel lively. The shadows are also a lot darker and more prominent, definitely more than they are in real life. The phone camera is a much colder and has brighter shadows, if any at all. I would say that in terms of creating a moody scene the digital camera wins on this. 

Another obvious difference is how detailed the pictures became. The phone shows things like wrinkles, material texture and just generally making things more obvious about what they are. The camera is generally blurry. Not enough to make it hard to tell what things are made of, but definitely not as clear as the phone, even in brighter settings. 

It may be due to habit, but for me it's also easier to control a phone than a camera. It's much easier to focus on what you want on the image, where as the camera feels like a bet half of the time (it took me so many tries to get the glowing letters on the keyboard readable). And I'm sure I can do some editing in my phone to make its photos match the appearance of the camera photos. 

Overall I am pretty satisifed with the digital camera. I think I'll have to get used to its quirks (if I should even call them that) to make a proper judgement of it and to make the best use it. Don't think it's going to replace my phone camera completely (being easy to pull out and also to post with are huge benefits) I do hope it'll eventually become my primary camera... assuming I can also get a charger for the camera/battery but uh that's for future me to solve lol.

camera mia

Having used a smartphone camera for a while and pretty often, I noticed a few quirks about it that's been pushing me to look for other alternatives for amateur hobby for fun photography:

• The lens is tiny and it has a distortion to it that I think makes it pretty bad for.... almost everything? Anything closer to edges of the screen looks larger and closer than it actually is, while anything in center looks smaller and further away than it actually is. That could work some experimental angles, but that's not why I use a quick and convenient camera for most of the time.
• Without doing some annoying post-edits, the camera will not capture the color/shade/brightness/whatever like I see it. This would be fine if it had a look to it, but the colors feel usually dull and sometimes just inaccurate, even with editing.
• So it's oddly neither good for selfies or nature/street photos, which is what I usually use it for.

I know that the big benefit of phone cameras is how convienent and fast and relatively detailed they are. And I won't, and can't, argue against those points, especially for the layman. But I want Accuracy To Reality. I want the skyline that I see look as proportionally large as I see it, I want the tree that's 5 meters away from me not look like it's 25 meters away, and so on.

A while ago I impulse bought a DSLR camera in inspiration from, sigh, Life is Strange. I didn't want to deal with film, but rather have photos in digital format so they can be easily edited on the computer if I wanted to, and a lens that didn't cause the cell phone distortion. I spent quite a bit of my time learning about aperture, focal lenghts, ISO and the cameras settings. In the end I've used the camera...... a total of 6 times? In the past 8 or so years I've owned it?
The issue was that it was just a smidge too bulky. I needed a separate bag to carry it around, and it was often difficult to catch photos of spontatnous moments. I've also found image editing to be a rather tiresome activity. So on the whole it is a perfectly fine camera, but I didn't have the Photographer Spirit to wield it.

R.I.P. (Burried in one of my drawers).

Last year I got the photography passion running again (think I was in a Get Off The Phone phase) and decided to try on digital cameras from the early 2000s. The internet told me they worked not only good, but that they had a certain Look onto them that makes them feel different from the cameras of today. Something something CCL or whatever. Either way I got sold in and eventually got a Pentax Optio S40.

There is a video of me doing the fortnite dance in this thing

I will be upfront that haven't been good at using it either. Some photos from home here and there. But I stumbled upon an issue where it wouldn't detect (or even quickly drain?) the batteries. I looked more into it and apparently that model is notorious for being picky about which types of AA batteries it uses well (didn't even know that was a thing). So I have to order some CR-V3 batteries (basically the best type of battery for old digital cameras, but they are pretty uncommon in stores it seems) to get the thing work reliably. I will give that a chance and try to stick with it. Otherwise I might have to try out a different digital camera, old or modern.

Dislike a Dragon

Just finished a second glass of sparkling wine.

In the previous entry I mentioned I was playing trough Yakuza: Like a Dragon and was about to encounter a notorious difficulty spike of a boss fight. I fought, lost, grinded my way higher levels and more varied movesets, changed team setup, fought again and won (felt like the fight took a while). Felt obnoxious.

What I wasn't expecting was this process would be repeated in similar ways for every upcoming boss fight, with their own annoying quirks that made to tired of playing the game. It got to it's breaking point in the final chapter where you have to go trough a 30 minute long dungeon and a fight a boss with ridicolous amount of health (no save points during any of this) and, get this, the boss starts using an instant kill move after getting to half health, trough the rest of the fight. The only way to deal with it was to use the rather unreliable blocking mechanic. He first attacked Ichiban, the protagonist. I failed to block, and it killed him, causing the game to ask me if I wanted to redo the fight again.

I didn't want to do the fight again. I got so sick with this annoying nonsense, so I watched the rest of the finale on youtube. Did you know there are two more long fights right after the boss? And, again, no way to save? Yakuza games have always had this weird dichtonomy where they want to have big long epic finales in these adult-themed games, but they are usually tedious and the lack of respect they have for players time (especially this game) has always made the finales dreadful. Doesn't exactly help that they rarely had satisifying endings, wether it's the gameplay and/or story.

Thankfully ending is actually among the best in the franchise. It's just a shame it's locked behind a massive swamp of slog.

It's a shame that I'm finished with the game on such a sour note, because everything up until that initial difficulty spike has been pretty darn good: main story, cast, side-quest and all.

I had plans to play either Hollow Knight or the DMC trilogy collection, but after being frustrated by game mechanics so much I'm feeling a bit hesitant of risking having that happen again, so I might take a break from games for a little time. Doesn't help that I haven't done much else today so I feel the desire to get other stuff done.

Bit of a shame to start the first proper work-weekend on a sour note. Should figure out what to do with the rest of the day, of the few hours I have left before bedtime.

Cool as Dragon

Can you believe it's snowing in Sweden? Well aparently, Sweden doesn't. This whole week has been filled with gorgeous snowy weather, but today it snowed Just A Little Bit Too Much so public transit fully stopped for a bit and I assume the car traffic did not fare much better. Me though? I was working from home and took a 25 minute long walk to the gym. I'm fully aware that it was the equivalent poverty tourism for snowy climate, but it is a bit odd how Sweden (or at least the south of it) seems to be so ill-prepared for heavy-ish snow. But hey, good opportunity for photos!
 

Statue of Karl IX

It also seems like tomorrow is not going to look any better weather-wise, so it will be a nice and chill restday tomorrow (which means: gaming). Actually, speaking of games, I've been craving some Riichi Mahjong lately. I wish I could say it was due to Yakuza: Like A Dragon since I'm playing it, but I haven't touched the Mahjong minigame at all. Instead it's due to passively watching some NorthernLion VODs and I felt the urge slowly growing on me. It's a similar feeling when I watch someone play World of Warcraft even though I've sworn off that game about the 5 times by now. But with Mahjong it wasn't so much "swearing off" as other things took interest. Doesn't help that learning the conditions you need to have a winning hand is a pain. I found out the city's Mahjong club is pretty close to where I live and it's been active for quite a few years. But I figure that I should prioritize getting my Croatian to be decent before I even consider getting another hobby. I have plenty of them as is. I do hope to finish Like A Dragon soon, but I do know from spoiling myself that I'm heading towards a massive difficulty spike in form of an Important Boss Fight, and there still are 3 or so chapters left, so it's going to take a while, but I have done what I think was sensible amount of grinding, so tomorrow I'll see how that paid off.

roadmap for personal self improvement patch release v 3.2.0.0

Oof. The bald content creators were not kidding about how once you shave your head it gets cold really easily. As soon as the steam of a hot shower leaves, the air might as well be from a freezer. Anyway, I figure since it's new year I would write up my new year resolutions. There really isn't a better time of the year to properly reflect how life has been and the things I want to do, in my opinion.

Find a matching hat for my coats

I think wearing beanies with coats look goofy (or at least the kind of coats that I have), but those are the only headwear I actually use. Might get myself my first flat cap for that. I'm not bold and brave and free enough to get a fedora/trilby, though. But flat caps would suit better anyway imo.

Continue getting more jacked

Haven't written a tangible goal beyond this vague description. Only that I will be bulking a bit slower than my previous bulk so my gains won't be mostly fat.

Floss every day

Stole this from a youtuber but it's a real one I do need. My dental health got worse according to the last dentist visit, so I have to get that fixed.

Learn croatian more

I am a 32 year old man born in Croatia and my vocabulary is barely on par with a five year-old. Embarassing and shameful. Really need to get this shit fixed.

Continue listening to old music

For about a year and half ago I've been doing this side project where I listen to popular albums released, year by year, since the 50's. I'm currently in 1973 and hope to get to at least the 90's. I noticed that the quantity of albums to listen to has been increasing quite a bit. 1973 is currently the record holder with TWENTY FOUR noteworthy albums and I hope it's just an edge case, since most of the previous years have been around 15 albums pr so.

Draw traditional art at least once per week

As I was in the art tools shop yesterday I realized I missed the excitement of drawing things on paper instead of just digital. It would also be good for my eyes to look at something for a while that is not a screen.

Play the remaining Yakuza games and the games bought during Steam's winter sale

That's right this is going to be The Gamer Year. In total it's going to be 11 games... which now that I have written that number down I realize I might not finish them all this year. But it'll be most of them!! Hopefully!! But after that I think I'll cool it down with video games for a bit.

Participate in Culture

Museums!! Cinema!!! Maybe even concerts!? Something else!?!? I want to explore the world of art beyond the online world and do it in the real world. Think it would be fun.

This might not be the best time to say "Let's be optimistic for a good year" but I don't want to be a downer, and do my best to keep my spirits up! Also being able to do HTML stuff owns I love it

this is me

Heyo! I'm Free(appears)/ Frippy/ Ivan. 

I've been chronically online most of my life for better or worse. I have done a few attempts at blogging but none of them really stuck for variety of reasons. But this one will not fail. Or at least not for those reasons.

This blog is going to be used to document my thoughts and sights about a variety of Things, from mundane stuff, hot takes, sexy takes, major life events and yelling at clouds.

My hobbies are primarly drawing, bodybuilding (not competitive that's cringe), gaming, clothes and enjoying banger online content.

See you later large reptile!

Me brushing a goat

blog entry number one which means blog entry best

Between the end of 2023 and middle of 2025 I would make monthly Instagram post with photos I've taken of that specific month. Around the halfway point I would also write about my reflections of events that happened during that time as well. After a while I got tired of it, since the posts would usually focus on the "Big Things" that happened during that time, which meant I had to spend a lot of time remembering what to write and it just got tedious. And my life was getting rather repetitive in terms of Big Stuff of what I have done. 

I did want to blog about the mundane and small things, but with the way Instagram was structured, the focus there was always on the most eye-catching content, and it was just not all that good of a place to write texts in. It'd feel odd to have a simple photo of a street light covered in stickers and reflect on politics on the same platform people use to share Funny And Helpful Videos. Especially since my audience were just my family members and friends.

An online mutual (lillyashton idk how to tag sorry) has been talking about Blogging On Actual Blog Sites today and it got me interested. Having reflected on my past blogging life on IG, that feeling went to genuine excitement for what I can do with blogging that even regular social media just don't capture fully.

Whether this is something that will actually last or just be a one-off thing is going to Depend but I do know that there are plenty of things in the upcoming future that I do want to blog about once they come.

So with all of this in mind, let me talk about what happened today, January 3rd:

THAT MOTHERFUCKER DID WHAT!?!?

Here I was hoping for a chill (figuratevly but hey I don't mind some light snow) day, but waking up to find out that some dipshit leader bombed a city in a different country just to kidnapp their dipshit leader was not really what I expected. I imagine there's going to be a wild series of events related to this.

To my personal life though: Did the first workout of the year! I always train early in the weekends, mostly to avoid having to deal with people, but it's also nice to have it over with early so the rest of the day is wide open for activities.

It was leg-day. Nothing to note but I did make solid progress on all of the exercises. I fear the inevitable plateu but I'm enjoying this W. 

I weighted at 83.50 kg (~184 lbs) this morning, and my current goal of the year is to slowly bulk upward. I don't set a definitive weight goal because expectations for how someone will look at a specific weight is going to differ in reality, depending on how fast you gain weight. 

Besides that I went out shopping. Got myself a cool dark brown belt from a second hand store and it has the belt holes across the whole belt, instead of just a handful at the tip. Got some very much needed new socks and coloring pencils, primarily for the black sketchbook that I got as a christmas present from a friend.

The big thing that happened though is that for the first time in my life I shaved my head. Had to confirm to the hairdresser at least twice that Yes. I want it at 0 mms. 

The reason being that I've noticed that my hair was thinning out at the top for a good while. I simply wasn't sure how it would look on me, so I saved it for after new years when I don't have any events where I had to look good.

Got a bit annoyed at a response from Threads where some random stranger responded by replying an AI edit of me in a rock stage. Unfortunately, people on Threads (or at least Swedish people on Threads) are far more okay with AI than I would like. It's honestly a bit gross. I told that person off and he seemed to have listened... for my case, anyway. I could see he kept doing that stuff to others but none of them (that I saw) got upset at him for that.

Truly a strange day for a lot of reasons. Thank you to everyone who took their time reading this. Will see you in a upcoming post!