A Question for You

[thefourthvine]

I want to thank those of you who said such amazingly wonderful things about me on meloukhia's love meme. I found those comments during a week that contained both a truly horrible round of bronchitis for the entire household and an ant invasion, and, really, I think the love meme was the good part of that week. So thank you not only for being nice, but for having perfect timing. You are awesome.

And, as payment, I am going to ask you to be more awesome. I'm sorry. It's just - I have questions. And I am hoping you have answers.

A Question about Cameras!

My birthday is fast approaching. And this year, I am resolved not to say, "I have no idea, um, whatever, I guess" when family members ask me what I'd like. This year, I am going to say, "Please put some money towards a new camera for me!" Because the camera I take all the earthling photos on has been good, but its annoying features annoy me more with each passing month. Also, it has started to have problems focusing. As in, it will sometimes take 20 or 30 pictures in a row without noticing that it is set to You Forgot Your Glasses mode. And these days there is a really dramatic pause between when I hit the button and when the picture is actually taken, a pause sometimes long enough that the earthling has not only moved out of the frame, but has also gone all the way to his room and selected a new outfit to change into. This suggests to me that its time as Main Household Camera is drawing to a close.

The last time I bought a camera, I knew nothing about them at all. This time, I have progressed to not knowing much about cameras but knowing what I don't like. I am hoping that somewhere out there there is a person who knows actual real things about cameras, who can provide me with shopping advice, including camera makes and so on.

I really, really want:

• Fast shutter speed. I want to hit the button and have the camera respond by taking the picture at that moment. Not in a few seconds. Not after the tiny camera elves get the memo. Not after the next EU president comes into office. Right then.
  
• Whatever it is that makes you able to take in-focus photos of fast-moving people in relatively low light conditions (in other words, indoors, during the daytime) without the flash. I know there are cameras that can do this! Mine, however, will not.

I really want (but am prepared to live without, if all the other features were perfect):

• A lot of optical zoom. Digital zoom is just not the same.
  
• Quick focusing and zooming ability, and no weird thing where I cannot zoom while the previous picture is displayed on the LCD screen.
  
• A viewfinder.
  
• A camera that does not require a degree to use. Or, if a degree is required, it should be one in biochemistry or forensic osteology, not photography or engineering.
  
• A camera that will fit into my diaper bag. It does not need to be tiny, but it does need to be smaller than, for example, my head. (One of the parents at the earthling's preschool has a camera that looks like it could conquer Kansas. It is very, very large, and has many removable lenses and other weird attachments including some things I swear I've also seen my oral surgeon use, and basically just seems underemployed taking photos of a toddler. It would be more suited to taking surveillance photos. Of bacteria. From Mars. That is too much camera for me.)

A Question about Gay History!

I am assuming that, fandom being what it is, there is someone somewhere in fandom who has a lot of knowledge of queer history. (If you know such a person, and that person is not on my friends list, I would greatly appreciate it if you'd point said person this way.) I am looking for books on what gay life was like in New York City before Stonewall - say, from 1930 to 1960. Anywhere in there. Non-fiction preferred, but I will read fiction if it's authentic and no one dies or ends up crazy or locked up somewhere or grimly involved in a loveless straight marriage because gay people can never be happy.

A Question about Mary Balogh (Spelling Potentially Contested)!

Best Beloved would like to start reading her works, and would appreciate some guidance on the best of them. What's a good first Balogh? BB likes good writing, and I hear from several of you that Balogh delivers on this front. She does not like non-con, heroines younger than 18, or infidelity.

(Note: The spelling of Mary Balogh's name is potentially contested because in our household her name has mutated. BB has yet to read a single one of her novels, and we've already renamed her Merry Balrog. No, there's no excuse. Although I have to tell you, straight up: I would read basically any novel written by Merry Balrog, because obviously you can trust someone who put that much thought into a pseudonym. And this is one of the many reasons why I don't understand the SF writers who insist that nothing people say online matters if they aren't posting under their real names. Have these people never noticed that choice of pseudonym tells you a lot about a person? Whereas a real name, at best, only tells you something about the person's parents.)

Comments

[gloss]

I am looking for books on what gay life was like in New York City before Stonewall - say, from 1930 to 1960
ONE OF MY FAVORITE SUBJECTS! Absolutely key is Gay New York, which starts in the late 19th c and continues up to about WW2. Before Stonewall is useful as well, though less so, and Queer Street is interesting and supplemental. That should get you started?

[juniperphoenix]

*seconds the rec for Gay New York* I posted some thoughts about it here.

[paceus]

we've already renamed her Merry Balrog. No, there's no excuse.

I can't help you with any of these things, but this is marvellously unexpected (because I don't mutate names or words) and it made me laugh, and I want to thank you for it! And what a great new name, too! *g*

[damned_colonial]

I am looking forward to the recs on gay history, but New York is not really my area. All I've got is fiction. "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" and "Stone Butch Blues" both come to mind, though Kavalier and Clay has a certain amount of loveless straight marriage stuff and I'm not sure whether SBB is actually set in NYC. Yeah, um. Maybe my recs are a bit suspect?

(You know how you are with faces on television? I'm like that with plots of books/movies/TV. I never remember what actually *happened*, just vague atmospheric details. Makes it easy to re-read whodunnits, though!)

[tesserae]

>>recs on gay history

Try The One Archives in Los Angeles; if you are looking for anything specific (or just general research guidance), they've probably got it.

... did someone say 'cameras'?

[aris_tgd]

For cameras? I'd suggest maybe trying a micro four-thirds style camera like the Olympus Pen. I have not used one myself (I have graduated to one of those degree-to-use cameras) but I have heard many good things from people about them.

Idly, the thing that allows the camera to take low-light pictures is called ISO, and it used to refer to film speed; it now refers to packing more light onto the chip through sheer force of will. The higher the ISO, the more light, but the lower color saturation and the more grainy your pictures will be. This will probably be perfectly fine for Earthling photos. Most cameras will have ISOs listed and will either switch them for you in auto modes or allow you to choose ones; you probably want a camera with at least 800-1600 ISO at the top range. (I don't know what point-and-shoots rate these days, sorry)

If you don't want a micro four-thirds I'd suggest getting a bridge camera--basically, it should have SLR-like response (getting rid of that gap between pushing the button and taking the picture) and no interchangable lenses to get in the way.

And if you go with another point-and-shoot, you can dramatically reduce time between pushing the button and getting the picture by holding down the button halfway before you want the picture taken, then pushing all the way down when you're ready.

[dine]

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey would be my first suggestion - it's a pretty decent book on the subject, and you can probably find a used copy

I'm pretty fond of Mary Balogh's writing (and like you would immediately glom onto anything by Merry Balrog). my absolute fave books are her older Signet Regencies (pretty much all out of print) - and the capper is The Famous Heroine. I will be sending you a copy in the next few weeks (as soon as I locate it), because I firmly believe everyone *must* read it.

[musesfool]

Yeah, I also remember enjoying her Signet Regencies quite a lot, though enough time has passed that they've mostly faded into one big blur, though iirc, I really did like "The Notorious Rake," "Lord Carew's Bride," and "Tempting Harriet."

[abyssinia]

Camera-wise I got a Canon (something off the PowerShot line) for a trip 1.5 years ago and have been generally pleased with it in terms of photo quality and motion issues (good shots even when they wouldn't be) and it does color well. I think, with how digital works, you can't actually make a digital camera which takes a picture the instant you push the shutter, though some are quicker than others and might catch Earthling only halfway into his second outfit rather than waiting for him to finish changing :)

As for gay New York...I got nothing, really, though if I was closer to my parent's house I'd see if I could unearth any of my great uncle's journals, since he lived that time period (okay, to be fair, whether or not he was actually gay he took to his deathbed, but pretty much all signs point that direction to the point where we assume so).

[wanted_a_pony]

The spelling of Mary Balogh's name is potentially contested because .... we've already renamed her Merry Balrog. No, there's no excuse. Although I have to tell you, straight up: I would read basically any novel written by Merry Balrog, because obviously you can trust someone who put that much thought into a pseudonym.

Goddesses above & below, I love your brain! It is shiny & splendiferous, & makes thoughts of peculiar tastiness. :-D
My BB & I also misre-name things, tho' we blame it on the overheard comments of our Kids. Who are, technically, stuffed otter & bear toys--along with a rabbit, caped tiger & Tinky-Winky. If we stopped to think about it too much we'd worry... so we don't.)

[astolat]

The Canon powershot IS line (IS stands for Image Stabilization, which is awesome) pretty much rocks. I use the Canon 800IS for casual snapshot taking, and have the Canon XS1IS because it takes 1080p high def video -- that's kind of the camera just before you graduate to the detachable lenses and the world of SLRs and whatnot.

But more generally, my process when buying is to go to Amazon and look at the reviews and the "people who looked at this page eventually bought X" links to find alternatives. Every camera has gripes, but the reviews will generally help you figure out which ones pros/cons best match up to your needs.

[wired]

I capture my fast-moving children two ways: a "complicated" camera which actually has an excellent point-and-shoot mode -- the Canon Rebel (and I love it), but it's heavy and big and I don't have it all the time, but when I do, I take pictures of them like this:

which is a hard shot for point-and-shoot cameras, because of the backlighting, but I didn't fiddle with any settings. I got my body used for about $200 and the lens used for about $35. Pawnshops, camera stores, etc. If you are willing to pick up an older generation, they are available. Response is instant and fast, and the display on the back is big and bright and lets me pick up on when I've got something wrong.

However, I don't always have the big camera with me. I did spend a fair amount of time choosing my "phone" (aka tiny pocket computer) so that it had pretty good optics.

It's not as great at low-light situations, and there is as much as a half-second delay, even now that I've jiggled all the settings to make it as fast as possible, but it's already in my pocket, which counts for a lot.

My "killer feature", which you can find on most reasonably digital cameras now, and even phone cameras, is the ability to white balance according to the light. I realize that this probably sounds like the engineering degree again, but it means that your pictures no longer look all yellow, or blue, or funny-colored. I love white balancing. Also, there are a ton of excellent books out there about digital photography+children. My sister got a good one last year, and her picture quality has shot up.

[aris_tgd]

For quick re-white-balancing in programs like Photoshop or GIMP or Lightzone(if you're going toward pro, it's the best thing in the universe), you can use the "color temperature" tool. Best. Post tool. Ever.

[killing_rose]

Zami by Audre Lorde, several things by Joan Nestle, Samuel Delany has a biography and/or essays about his experience, and then I have a bunch of stuff explicitly with a queer studies focus, if you want them.

[epershand]

For cameras, this flow chart might help you find something.

[fatima_failte]

Two books I remember reading back in undergrad on gay history were Hidden from History and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, both of which have been in print for ages. I don't remember how NYC specific they were though - it's been more than 20 years.

On cameras - I got nothing. I hate mine for all the reasons you listed as things to avoid.

[devildoll]

I was once a fan of Merry Balrog (*g*) but after the second time the villain of the book was a person motivated to hide their homosexuality, I lost a little enthusiasm. I understand trying to present homosexuality in context for that time, and I admire a writer who tackles the difficulties of being gay and keeping it a secret, and how it can ruin your life (and someone else's) when you are afraid of discovery, but the things the gay man did in the last book I read were particularly awful. (The first one, a woman, was portrayed a little more sympathetically.) It's two books out of, I dunno, dozens. So maybe I'm just over-sensitive. *hands*

(Also, I love her writing in general but her sex scenes are so completely unsexy. I'll be curious to see what BB has to say!)

[celli]

I feel terrible that I can't even *remember* which books those are. Help?

[celli]

I own almost every Mary Balorogh (I hate you) ever. I don't know BB as well as you, so here are some of my favorites:

Slightly Married, which hit every angst marriage of convenience underdog button I had. It is the first in the Bedwyn series (the Simply series), which has two prequels and a four-book connected series (the Slightly series). I love love love the last book in each series, but I feel like part of that is because you see those characters through all the earlier books, so I wouldn't start with them.

Simply Love, the second book in the Miss Martin's School for Girls series (mentioned above), because it has a seriously wounded and disfigured war hero and a sexual assault survivor heroine and neither of those things are just wished away, but dealt with as respectfully as I've ever seen done in a romance.

More Than a Mistress, one of her earliest single titles.

I think I've only gotten rid of one of her books ever. I am definitely in love. Hopefully BB will like them too! She can also check my Goodreads page for my reviews, which may or may not have more details, depending on the day.

[tesserae]

there is someone somewhere in fandom who has a lot of knowledge of queer history.

I can maybe point you in the right direction: The One Archive is down on Adams Blvd near USC, and they seem to have all of gay/lesbian history carefully archived within their walls. They are part of USC now, but, as far as I could tell when I was there on a tour a few weeks ago, extremely open to requests to use the archive. Worth a call/email, in any case, and the director is entirely awesome...

[via_ostiense]

Going by your need-to-have camera features, I suggest a low-end DSLR (unless you like film, in which case, SLRs ahoy!). They've got a wider range of shutter speeds and apertures than point-and-shoots, which allows them to take pictures nearly instantaneously in good light and at a reasonable speed in low light (1/60th second is fast, and about the slowest that you can go while keeping the image stable).

take in-focus photos of fast-moving people in relatively low light conditions (in other words, indoors, during the daytime) without the flash

This is a tricky one with a point and shoot -- the flash turns on automatically because the camera usually perceives indoor lighting or cloudy daytime lighting as being too dark even though it looks fine to most human eyesight. The flash goes off automatically and actually makes things darker; you can manually set the flash to off, but then the shutter speed slows down in order to capture more light, and the picture becomes blurry.

I like Canon's Powershot line for point-and-shoots; the images are clear and the cameras are easy to use. Their DSLRs are wonderful, but awfully pricey; one of the higher-end Powershots could be a good compromise in terms of having better shutter speed and manual control options, but being less overkill than a Rebel.

[thingswithwings]

There is in fact a very acclaimed book by George Chauncey (a pretty good gay historian) called Gay New York, and it covers 1890-1940. I recommend it! However, like many books about "gay history" it is in fact about "gay male history," so if you're looking for lesbians, it's no good. The famous lesbian history book that comes to mind immediately is Faderman's Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, which is more generally 20th century America - though I'm sure there are books about the lesbian scene in New York in that time period, I don't know any personally.

For fiction, I quite like a book called Under the Mink, which is set in Greenwich Village post-WWII, and is all about female crossdressing and lesbianism and a lovely kind of all-over queerness. I remember it as being charming and not having dead queers etc., but I haven't read it in years and don't know how much to trust my nineteen-year-old self who read it.

[sansets]

Echoing the Gay New York recs - I'm getting my MA in US 20th Century History of Sexuality and it's pretty much THE book in the field on pre-Stonewall gay history. (Like others have said, it is gay men, but he's quite correct when he points out that doing a history of lesbians at the time is actually an entirely different project and that doing both at the same time would just do both a disservice.) And for women, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, which is about lesbians in Buffalo during the same time period. It's more of an oral history project than Chauncey's, but both are highly readable in different ways and I regularly recommend both for non-academics.

Slumming has a few chapters that might be of interest to you - it focuses on race, class and sexuality in Chicago and New York, so I'd get that from the library rather than buy it, unless you are really in love with the topic, because parts of that dip into more academic-ese than always need to happen.

And for more general books, The Straight State is an AWESOME exploration of how homosexuality became implicitly defined as not being a citizen of the US. Again, sometime it slips into academic-ese, but Canaday is really great about exploring and explaining what the legal jargon actually meant for real peoples' lives, so it mostly balances out. (You can pretty much take it as read that these authors are going to slip into academic-ese at some points, but none of these are too bad.) Coming Out Under Fire is one of my MOST FAVORITE BOOKS EVER about gays and lesbians finding each other and creating a sense of community during World War Two. The Lavender Scare is a really interesting look at the homosexual purge governmental jobs during The Cold War.

[elspethdixon]

Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers, Coming Out Under Fire, the Beebo Brinker books, and Chauncey's Gay New York have all been recced already, so that leave my "pre-Stonewall LGBT experience books to squee over" already exhausted.

I can help on the Mary Balogh front, though. Her books tend to be low on the melodrama and h/c front, but they tend to really focus on the two leads' relationship and feelings for one another. They're... "sweet," is the best descriptor I can think of. They're often very traditional Regency in feel and include a lot of quiet slice-of-life moments.

I really enjoyed her "Lord Carew's Bride," which is essentially about the hero and heroine forming a lasting relationship based on shared interests and mutual esteem and they actually become friends before they become lovers, rather than being struck with burning sexual passion the very first time they lay eyes on one another.

I also liked "A Secret Affair," for taking the endlessly tiresome "My first husband never slept with me because he was really old/totally gay" cliche and inverting it - the widowed heroine who was married a much older (and also gay and yet not evil) man truly loved him and misses him, and they had a happy marriage that was truly a partnership despite not involving sex. She and the hero come across as a little Mary Sueish given how they're both misjudged as shallow or conniving by society but are actually secretly responsible for major charitable undertakings, but I forgive that because I really like the heroine (though I think I actually like what we see of her first husband via flashbacks and her memories more than I like the hero).

[gool_duck]

Whenever I see a thing people ask, and I think - well, the book I've read that comes to mind is x - I wonder why all the people before me have not mentioned x. And if I was wrong to think of suggesting x in the first place. Probably I am wrong.

So anyway: The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White is a fictionalised autobiography - a gay young man - growing up, at first a student in University of Michigan and later in New York City. on amazon: The Beautiful Room is Empty

New York Times book review

Probably it is all fiction and has been proven to have no truth in it at all by now, or something. But fiction has value, too.

[winter_elf]

Camera's. Yea, basically every digital I've used has a lag time. Some more than others. I use two digitals, depending on what I need to do with them

Older Canon Powershot A60 - small, portable, not a huge lag time, decent on indoor shots, better flash than my larger digital. Great for cons and faires and parties. I've taken it all over New Zealand and England and taken amazing outdoor pictures and pictures of castles. drawbacks: only 3x zoom, only 2.3mg size

New Canon Powershot SX10IS - NICE long lense (20x), point & shoot, wonderful outdoor. drawbacks: has a hard time indoor (no power to flash really), slow, need two hands. Since I know it's slow, I often keep on 'sport' function and take many shots - and often get one that's good.

Basically, it really IS a matter of taste. I find myself grabbing the smaller Canon alot because one handed use and faster. If I'm going somewhere where I want the distance, then I grab the bigger one. See if there are camera classes offered in your area (usually run by like say a camera store or brand). Because often they will have cameras you can play with and use. I actually took one at a national park put on by Canon where they had cameras offered to borrow and it was a great overview of different types. A kid in our group used the G9 and utterly LOVED it. She took better pictures than a lot of the pros of the group with this easy point&shoot that has programing options. They now have a G10, and it might be a good range camera for you to look at. No large lense, but great little camera.

Also, some cameras will feel better to you than others. Some feel too light to me, or I have a hard time/hands don't fit their grip right, etc. Go to a store and handle the ones you are interested in.

re: Mary Balogh. LOL! I LOVE her signet Regencies. She writes the BEST rakes! :)

Balrog

[vass]

The following books are in the same series:

One Night For Love
A Summer To Remember
All the Slightly books
All the Simply books.

That series would make a good starting point. I like the Simply books best, but they do contain spoilers for the earlier books.

[solo]

I've got a Canon Digital Ixus 9515 (point & click) and I'm pretty happy with it. Shutter speed is good - I take photos of my kitten with it, and kitten is not known for sitting still and posing very long. It also seems to adjust ISO on the fly, and pics taken in dark conditions turn out well. I can't say much about the digital zoom because I don't really use it... I *think* pics turn out a bit fuzzy, but maybe you can read up on that somewhere.

Another good feature of this camera is that from not even being *on* it goes to being ready to shoot in something like three seconds. Or less. Like, seriously fast. My previous camera seemed to require a warm-up of three laps around a baseball field and some stretching.

[ceares]

I am pretty happy with my Kodak z712, which can do a lot more than I ask of it. Before I bought, I obsessively checked out Cnet which does reviews and comparisons, and lets you plug in which features you are looking for and offers suggestions.

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/kodak-easyshare-z712-is/4505-6501_7-32412495.html

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/?tag=hdr;snav

[laurakaye]

I love Mary Balogh - I would recommend pretty much anything of hers that I've read EXCEPT Devil's Web, which I haaaaaaaaaaated; I was like, Mary, you are really good at doing sweet stories, don't try your hand at hatesex.

Anyway, I liked the Bedwyn books (the Slightlys) for the most part, and really liked the Miss Martin's School books (the Simplys). The two series actually take place in the same universe with some overlap in characters who appear, so that's a nice long chunk to start with.