Time to buy more disk?

I’m currently on my fifth digital camera. I bought my first Sony Mavica FD7 in 1997. This had VGA resolution, i.e. 640×480 pixels (or 0.3 megapixel). The “memory” for this camera was a 3’5 inch diskette and could actually fit 20 pictures on one diskette. I later moved on to the Sony Cybershot F505, the Sony Cybershot F828, before finally going to a digital DSLR in 2008 with the Sony Alpha 350, which I replaced late 2010 with the Sony Alpha 580. Below is a graph of the image sensor size for the cameras.

As I’ve gotten more active, I’m also taking more pictures every year, as you can see below.

Which of course means that I need more and more disk space. Last year I filled up nearly 180 GB of photos. With the Sony Mavica I could fit one year of photos on one CD!

However, this is not as as bad as it looks, considering the decrease in cost of hard disk.  In 1997 the size of 1GB  hard disk was USD 100 while in 2011 this was reduced to USD 0.1. This means that the total cost of storing all my images was USD 14 in 1997 and USD 18 in 2011.  The graph below shows the total cost of hard disk to store all my images.

Here are a couple of links if you want to see more information about hard disk costs: 

• Matt Komorwski blog
• Doug Kaye blog

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Self-portrait

Self portrait

Last night at the hotel in Walldorf, just me an my camera, so we decided to work together and make a self-portrait. Not used to seeing myself in a photo, but I guess it didn’t turn out too bad.

Sunset in Germany

Yet another beautiful sunset in Germany, although I was not able to catch how red the sun really is when it is setting here. Too bad the red is due to air pollution… But it is still beautiful.

Our neighbors in the sky

Last Saturday we had a really clear sky for a change, and I got some photos of our celestial neighbors. I used my 11-18mm lens, and took two different pictures, and then stitched them together. The stitch itself is very visible, especially due to the wide angle lens, but the moon is placed overlapping in the two photos. So from left to right: Mars (far down to the left), Moon, Jupiter and Venus. Due to the forest I never got to see Mercury, and before Saturn decided to come above the horizon, the clouds came.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Both photos are taken at 11mm, 400 ISO, F8, 2.5seconds.