Greetings 2014

There are a lot of blogger folks that have posted their gaming thoughts concerning last year and their plans for this year. I didn't really want to review 2013 because there wasn't a whole lot going on hobby-wise for me, particularly in the the second half of the year. I did do some gaming, but never got around to posting my adventures. Therefore, 2013 was not a great year for blog posts. Besides not a lot of hobby-related activities, I found that I had little time to post things. But this may change!

Welcome Chris to the 21st Century!

There was special on January 2nd for a Samsung Galaxy S4 phone at BestBuy. Up to this point, I've been using an old flip phone. I really wanted an iPhone, but the price was right for the Samsung: free. At least for the phone. I was told by many that the Samsung had a better camera than the iPhone. My wife has an iPhone and her camera is pretty darn good, so it was hard to imagine an even better camera.

Last night, I did a test drive of the camera's macro abilities. I had some 15mm Chariot Miniatures mounted lizardmen (LIZ010) on hand. Other than cropping them, no digital touch ups were made on the pictures.

Test shot 1: Samsung Camera only

Test shot 2: Using Magnifying App

The first shot was just using the camera itself. The second was using a magnifying app that I found. Both employed the phone's light. I am not really sure which is better, but either way, I am pretty impressed. Using my camera's phone is a lot faster than setting up my DSLR, so hopefully, I will be posting more than I have. In addition to fun & games, I do have a serious reason for having a phone with these capabilities. I take a lot of photographs of fossil specimens for my research. Many of the specimens are rather small, or I need close ups of certain features. This phone should be very useful in the field or at museum collections where I don't have access to a camera stand.

Let me know which one you think is better. I clearly need to avoid the harsh shadows.

Happy New Years! May you get in all the gaming that you hope for!