Our iPhoto library hit 20,000 photos, 701 events, and 70 gigabytes on Sunday. This seems like a good time for a little introspection into what all these photos are. So I’ve put together some breakdowns.
By Year
| Year | Photos | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2001-2002 | 865 | We started taking digital photos in November 2001. I’m combining these years because I don’t have accurate data, due to my using the unforgivably crappy Adobe Photoshop Album as our first photo library. When I exported the photos from the library, their EXIF data was mangled somehow. |
| 2003 | 1,177 | |
| 2004 | 2,887 | In the summer of 2004 we put our belongings in storage, rented out our house, and moved to Jerusalem for a year. I think the big jump over the previous year is due to our getting our first pocket camera in December 2003, and due to taking more photos once in Israel. |
| 2005 | 2,379 | Living in Jerusalem for the first half of this year, we took lots of photos while there. We returned to Baltimore in June, and moved to Brooklyn in November. |
| 2006 | 2,559 | Our first year in New York. |
| 2007 | 4,949 | Another big jump. This one seems to be due to our getting our first digital SLR in December 2006. |
| 2008 | 4,515 | |
| 2009 (Jan 1 – Feb 3) | 730 | 2009 is off to a strong start, due to our new niece Annabelle, an Arc90 event, and Elina’s birthday. |
By Camera
| Camera | Photos | Megabytes | Date Range | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nikon Coolpix 775 | 1,455 | 808 | November 2001 – January 2004 | I gave this camera to Elina in November 2001, for our six-month dating anniversary. It was her first digital camera – and I played with it more than she did! |
| Unknown | 663 | 679 | May 2002 – January 2009 | A combination of photos that were:
|
| Pentax Optio S4 | 2,620 | 4,300 | December 2003 – November 2004 | Our first ultra-compact. I actually kept it in an Altoids tin, as in their marketing campaign. And that’s how I lost it; the Altoids tin was slippery, and it slipped out of my pocket in a cab. I got some surprisingly great shots with this tiny camera: a mountain range from a bus; a cicada. |
| Canon PowerShot SD300 | 2,132 | 3,600 | December 2004 – February 2006 | Our second pocket camera, and the first that took high-quality video, which I used a lot. Fantastic camera. Check this out. |
| Noritsu Koki QSS-32 | 166 | 328 | March 2005 – May 2005 | Shot with our Nikon N65 on 35mm film and scanned directly from the film roll by a lab in Jerusalem. |
| Canon EOS 10D | 745 | 1,700 | July 2005 – December 2006 | This is Sima’s camera, which we borrowed on a few occasions. |
| Canon PowerShot SD550 | 399 | 580 | December 2005 – August 2007 | I don’t think we owned this one, we must have imported or copied a bunch of photos from some family and friends. |
| Canon PowerShot SD600 | 1,515 | 4,000 | July 2006 – December 2008 | Replacement for our SD300 after I lost it or dropped it, can’t recall. I think we owned two of these, and in fact I broke both of them by dropping them at concerts. I believe the first concert was Matisyahu and the second was Blind Melon. Following the demise of our most recent SD600, we are once again needing another pocket camera (or two). Decision time, yay. |
| Nikon D80 | 9,190 | 30,700 | December 2006 – present | Our first digital SLR, and currently our primary camera. Still thrilled with it! |
| Apple iPhone | 208 | 111 | June 2007 – December 2008 | I’m not a big iPhone shooter – I actually think Elina takes quite a few photos with hers though, and they’re not accounted for here, being stored on her laptop. |
By Lens
We have three lenses for our Nikon D80, so it’s interesting to compare.
| Lens | Photos | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 28mm | 6,143 | Not surprising that this one came out on top. It’s fast, small, and light. It’s the only lens we bought used. The focal length, on our D80 with its APS-C sensor, ends up being equivalent to about 42mm – just slightly wide, and very useful. |
| 18-55mm DX II | 2,710 | Useful when we need a zoom, but it’s big, bulky, and a little slow, so it’s not our default lens. |
| 50mm | 337 | The least used by far, even though it’s the sharpest. On our D80, with its APS-C sensor, this is roughly equivalent to an 80mm lens on a 35mm camera. That means it’s not very useful indoors, except for posed portraits – which we rarely shoot. Interestingly, this lens is one of the reasons that we bought the D80 specifically, as opposed to the D40; the D80 is compatible with these older lenses. It’s the only lens we had before we bought the D80; we had used it with our N65 35mm film camera, where the 50mm “standard” focal length was very useful. |
Metadata
- 3,155 rated; 16,923 unrated
- 12,642 tagged; 7,436 untagged
- 2,826 tagged “Elina”; 918 tagged “Avi”
- Uploaded to Flickr: 2,102, which is 10.51% of our library
Backup
Our photo library’s total size is currently 69.61GB, and we’re backing it up to Amazon S3. So according to their Pricing Calculator, we’re paying about $10 a month to back it all up. Hmm.
Methodology
I gathered all the numbers manually using iPhoto’s “Smart Albums” feature. For example, to figure out how many photos we took in 2006, I created a Smart Album with a criteria for the date to be between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006. I’m not sure if this is 100% accurate but it’s close enough for my purposes. For every Smart Album I created, I also added the criteria “Photo is not Movie” to exclude movies.
For more accurate, comprehensive, and automated analysis, I was thinking of using Metadata Export for iPhoto to export metadata about every single photo in my library to CSV, then writing a Python script to gather all sorts of statistics about the photos using EXIF data. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance; maybe next time.
