Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 September 23

= September 23 =

Shopping for a first DSLR
What the title says... In any case I've started looking for a dslr, and at this point here are possibilities I was looking at. I know that in general, lenses are more important than the camera itself. I have some lenses that will work with a $10 adapter, but they don’t have autofocus, auto anything for that matter. In any case I’ve been looking on craiglist and ebay, and was waiting until after photokina to purchase anything, because there will undoubtedly be big announcements driving prices down. I’m not sure what direction to go, what exactly is a good deal, and what lenses would be good for a beginner. The video capabilities of the 500D are of course nice, but not necessary by any means. I’d be willing to pay somewhat more for them. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 01:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * EOS 350D (Rebel XT)
 * EOS 400D (Rebel XTi)
 * EOS 450 (Xsi)
 * EOS 500D ( T1i)
 * 40D
 * 50D
 * Nikon D40
 * Aargh, no opinions here. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 01:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been debating the same question with myself for about 8 years lol... It ALL comes down to what you will use the camera for, how much you can afford and what features are important to you. dpreview.com is my fav site for drooling over the goodies coming out of that industry. Vespine (talk) 04:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * One of the main reasons I chose a Nikon D50 over a EOS 300D some years ago is because the D50 fits in my hand better, whereas the 300D felt too cramped in my reasonably big hands. On the Nikon side there's also the D3100 which offers newer generation software and sensor. But in the end, you should really just go play with a few and see which one you like, which one you really want. The standard kit lens (18-55mm) from either company is excellent (especially for its price) and it should be enough 90% of the time. Any additional lenses will depend on what you plan to do: low light? (fast prime) birds? (long tele) portraits? (medium tele) close-ups? (macro). I'd advice against using manual focus lenses on low end cameras as it is quite difficult to focus. They do not have any focus aids that old SLRs used to have and it's often quite difficult to tell if it's focused properly or not. --antilivedT 07:42, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * From Canon EOS 500D: "For anybody buying their first DSLR the 500D is an easy recommendation but you might want to have a look at the Nikon D5000 as well. It comes with a similar feature set to the 500D ('only' 720P video though) and performs slightly better in low light" (the 500D can only record 1080p video at 20fps).  (talk) 08:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If you're starting from scratch and don't have a lens collection, you have a fair amount of freedom to decide on Canon vs. Nikon. In my opinion Canon has better lenses but lags Nikon in cameras. Since camera bodies come and go but lenses are forever, I went with the lenses and have Canon equipment, assuming I'd upgrade bodies periodically.  That hasn't happened yet, as I've preferred to spend money on other things, and I'm mostly happy with my XTi - although I'm looking for an excuse to get a 7D. Still, the differences between Nikon and Canon in optics are miniscule. Really, any of the last-but-one models will work fine for starting out, like an XSi or T1, or the Nikon equivalents. The more recent versions have a heavy emphasis on video and live view using the display rather than the viewfinder. I'd echo Antilived's advice on manual focus lenses with modern DSLRs - it's a nuisance to manually focus DSLRs due to the lack of a split focus in the viewfinder or other similar aid from manual SLR days. I only fall back on manual when the camera can't acquire a focus on a low-contrast or low-ilght subject, or, rarely, when it just won't focus on the object I want in focus. Newer cameras will have higher ISO ratings and will do better in low light, helping you to avoid having to buy expensive wide-aperture lenses. As for lenses, I shoot with a mid-range zoom 80% of the time, then a tele-zoom, and occasionally with an ultra-wide zoom. Your selections are all APS-C format - keep crop factors in mind.   Acroterion  (talk)  21:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

How many biographies?
Wikipedia seems to have a biography on everyone in the news these days, as well as on every significant historical figure. What is the current count of biographies, and how many are of living people? Is the statistic kept anywhere on the web site? Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 18:09, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Category:Living people has 489,712 articles. MilborneOne (talk) 18:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You have to remember though, the number of biographical articles are changing all the time, and some biographical articles might not be listed in the category MilborneOne mentions. Chevy  monte  carlo  18:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Definitely not. All the notable dead people, for starters.  Not everyone who merits a WP article, whether dead or alive, is or was a "significant historical figure", or would necessarily make the news.   We have our own criteria for inclusion.  --  Jack of Oz   ... speak! ...   19:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It still would be very interesting to know approximately which percentage of people with articles are alive. Counting all entries in Category:people would include redundancies and also fictional sub-sub-categories, so that's not a very good approach. Counting all the articles under category:Deaths by year doesn't include those whose year of death isn't known (and also those who haven't been added to that category for random reasons, the same problem as with counting items in any category). Does anyone know whether anyone has gone through the trouble of making an estimate? (If there is an easy way to add and count all sub-categorized articles in Category:Births by year, then we might even be able to show the distribution of people born before vs after any desired cut-off year, or within any time period). ---Sluzzelin talk
 * WP:BIOG stats currently show 863,422 biographies on wikipedia. So perhaps 50% of biog articles are on the living. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * How could we find out how many of the articles in the bio category have date-of-death entries? We could sample those that don't to get a sense of how many of those ought to have one, and get a reasonable estimate from those numbers how many of them are actually still among the living.   Wiki Dao  &#9775;  (talk)  23:09, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I did a statistical analysis, and compiled a few others who did the same, here. I found about 23% of pages are biographies and 13% are of living persons. Geographical articles are the most common exclusive type (that results has been replicated in other samples too). Shadowjams (talk) 08:20, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The geography percentage has come down tremendously over time. A few years ago, clicking "Random article" on Wikipedia would get you a bot-generated article about a small town in America, derived from the US Census, about 75% of the time.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I hadn't found that to be the case recently, at least between 2008 and 2010. During that timeframe, an earlier analysis and my later one both found 17%. It'd be interesting to see numbers about earlier distributions though. Look at user:rambot for some interesting context on the geographic city additions too. Shadowjams (talk) 17:57, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * See Systemic bias. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:27, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * EnglishWikipediaArticleCountGraphs.png definitely well over 50% minor US towns around 2004/5ish and must have been higher before. This proportion was due to User:rambot's legendary run: Autaugaville, Alabama was the first bot-created town stub in late 2002. You can see the astonishing single-handed effect at the bottom graph to the right (pink line is number of new articles per day on Wikipedia). A similar scenario but even more extreme exists in some of the new "small language" Wikipedias, where the bulk of content is bot-created (e.g. Volapuk). Have there been any major bot-assisted runs of biography creation? I can recall some big biography creation drives (e.g. of historical baseball players several years ago) but I think that was just a well co-ordinated human effort. TheGrappler (talk) 05:15, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Do Maltesers eat maltesers?
Are Maltesers available in Malta? 92.15.8.96 (talk) 21:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * They might if the weather weren't too 'ot. Insteadilet  (I'm practising my Palin speak) Minstrels get my vote -because what do Minstrels do?!!!!--Aspro (talk) 21:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Which Palin, Michael or Sarah? (Can you see Malta from your house?) —  Michael J 22:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)::
 * Oh, is Michael a comedian too? (I oughta see Malta but my eyesight does faulta).
 * No, No, No. Unlike Maltesers, '' Minstrels  melt in your mouth, not in your hands"--Aspro (talk) 20:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Very entertaining thread. -- KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:36, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I would note according to Maltesers and Malta, the people are called Maltese not Maltesers although some do use the other term  Nil Einne (talk) 15:12, 27 September 2010 (UTC)