The month or so has been silent – I’ve been running around places, trying to figure out which college is better, being sad, etc. It’s all over now. And thanks to Phil for writing a post to help me get off my ass and start blogging This week is going to be Thomas Hawk’s week – I’ve got 5 posts lined up about Thomas Hawk’s Flickr usage. Here’s the first one – his camera settings stats.

Buying Note: This report is now available for everyone, so if you want it done to your account, mail me (Details at the end of the post) I’m doing this for a small amount to get myself enough money for some kickass GoGrid servers, a laptop and a phone. Scroll to the bottom for the details. More reports coming up soon!

Basic Info

Thomas Hawk has 14,272 photos on Flickr, which have so far received a total of 50,536 comments from 10,748 people and faved 95,025 times by 21,537 people. In short – he is one of the popular (and my personal favorite) photographers on Flickr. I’ll get more into his usage patterns in a later posts, so let the fun begin

Most used Cameras

So most (72%) of his photos are shot using his Canon 5D, 17% using his (probably) older 10D and 10% are missing the EXIF Data Flickr uses to tell you which camera the photo was shot with. The missing Exif can be either due to some stupid tool that mangles them, screenshots, or just Flickr acting up (happened more than once)

As for the “Other Cameras”, 67 were taken with a FinePix F601, 27 with a FinePixA303 (both Fuji cameras) and one with a Rebel XTi. Nikon has so far been absent here – however, there are two
photos from Nikon Cameras in his Flickr Feed! Both are, however, NOT his photos – so I think we can safely say that Thomas is a total Canon Fanboy (as if we didn’t know that), to the extent that he hasn’t shot a single, flickr-uploadable picture with a Nikon

Processing Software Used

About one third (36%) of his photos go straight up – no post processing. 61% of them are, however, processed with some version of Photoshop – Windows before he switched, Mac after the switch. This can be pretty easily seen – The Windows ones use CS and CS2, while the Mac ones use CS2 and CS3. Not a single photo post processed from CS3 Windows. Must be lovin his Mac I guess

Adobe Photoshop Elements (The Desktop Version) was used for a tiny amount, and he played around with the online photo editor Picnik.com (29 pics) and the MS Pro Photo Tools (25 photos).

So, what do I say? Adobe Fanboy?

Camera Modes Used

Two thirds of his photos (66%) use Program (or semi-automatic, as my non-photographer friends (doesn’t mean I’m a photographer (atleast a pro))) mode. He has used Aperture Priority more than Manual or Shutter Priority – this did kinda surprise me, but then again, my Camera (an S3) doesn’t really offer much in terms of Aperture control. Creative Mode, as far as I know, means Bulb mode.

As for the 3,870 photos with missing information? They might be “Auto”. I don’t know – Many of them are shot with the 5D, and I don’t know what the 5D means when it doesn’t set the Mode property in EXIF, ‘coz I haven’t touched/seen a 5D in real life. So, if you do, please let me know in the comments.

Focal Lengths Used

Almost a half (44%) of his photos are taken with a single lens – a 135 mm. Most of his shots seem to be taken with Primes rater than Zooms, ‘coz the top ten most used focal lengths (displayed here) are all well rounded and “prime length”. If I go down the list a bit, I come across odd numbers like 188 mm, 15mm, 81mm, 65mm, 27mm, 196mm, 33mm, 56mm, etc that I put down to use of Zoom lenses. He can haz lenzez I canh onleez dreamz about

ISO Settings used

Nothing much. When he sets it manually it’s either optimized for indoor (ISO 1600) or outdoor (400 on a 5D should produce good stuff). The rest are produced automatically by the camera when in Auto ISO mode (guess here, it could be just as well him tweaking the settings to make it “perfect”)

I did find some exotic ISO settings there though – 80 shots in ISO 125, 96 in ISO 160, but only 1 in ISO 50. 67 Shots were night time shots/club shots (guess) at ISO 3200. No ISO higher than 3200 was recorded (might be because that’s the 5D’s limit – again, guess)

Flash

No Flash is the favorite. Understandable – the 5D doesn’t come with an inbuilt flash, and takes excellent low light pictures without the need for flash. If I were to do these stats for someone with a P&S camera (like me), there will be lots more of flash, ‘coz it’s necessary to get usable pictures under low light.

Conclusion

I do have some more data about Shutter Speed and Aperture settings, but they’re pretty useless ‘coz they are usually selected by a computer program on the camera, than by Thomas himself.

This is the end of it – The Thomas Hawk Camera Usage Report. There are atleast four others coming up just for Thomas Hawk, so stay tuned!

Want yours?

I need to get some cash(to buy myself a laptop and phone for college, and perhaps get some awesome GoGrid servers for a site I’m coding), so you can get Flickr reports for your own photostreams/faved photos. You could get this report, which I’ve “creatively” named the Camera Settings Report, for your PhotoStream (photos by yourself) or FavesStream (Photos you have faved on Flickr) for $5 if you’ve got less than 1,000 photos, $10 for 1,000 – 5,000 photos, $15 for 5,000 – 15,000 photos, and $20 if you have more than 15,000 photos. It’ll be a private word doc sent to you, with the charts (as well as the raw numbers), with full rights to reproduce it wherever you want to, without requiring credit (ofcourse, credit would be nice to have!) So, get some weird stats about yourself, and in the process, get me a Laptop

The process is quite simple – send me a mail to yuvipanda@gmail.com with your photo/faves stream, and I’ll get back to you with the data within 36 hours. And then you can pay me

This is just the first of a large number of reports coming up – Comments and Likes Report for Flickr, Twitter Report, Blog Report, Digg Report, etc coming up. Stay tuned!