End of commercial announcements for now. (Wait till the eBay auctions begin, then I’ll really turn things up!)

This is wrong. The Blu-ray disc is not the subordinate bonus disc. That’s a ridiculous statement on Disney’s part. There are two SKUs for the “Snow White” home video release.

The first is a cheaper lesser DVD-only release. It has the movie, some bare bonus bits, and that’s it.

The Blu-ray SKU contains two Blu-Ray discs (the feature, and a disc of bonus materials) plus the original DVD disc as a bonus, mostly to be used in the car player for the kids in the back seat. That DVD disc isn’t what anyone is purchasing that box for. It’s a secondary feature to be added to the Blu-ray release.

Even worse, Disney advertises this as a “Disney DVD” release with the Blu-ray insignia hidden in the bottom right corner of the box. Disney is living in the past, and needs to deal with the fact that it’s publishing two formats, and should have a name that encompasses both. (Take, for example, the way Apple has “iOS” to cover all its mobile touch-screen devices, instead of an “iPhone OS.”)

Yes, there are still more DVD players out there than Blu-ray players. Most likely, that will always be true. That’s not the issue here. The issue is — well, purely semantic. But it’s a horrible way to market a Blu-ray disc. Those who want the Blu-ray are used to a certain packaging that Disney isn’t using. It’s not the slightly smaller box. It’s not the box with the blue bars at the top and bottom. It’s just — wrong.

If the Internet seems slow after lunch (Eastern time) that’s why.

50mm is something of a sweet spot in photography, though. It’s close to the way the eye actually works. So to get to 50mm with my non-full frame camera, I need to get a lens closer to 35mm.

Thankfully, there are two viable options, both well reviewed.

The first is the Canon 35mm f/2 lens. It’s a hair slower at f/2 instead of f/1.8 (less than a third of a stop, I believe), but I don’t think I’ll ever notice. It’s the equivalent lens for a crop sensor camera, and I’m surprised it’s not talked about more often. The reviews at FredMiranda.com are pretty good, with an average 8.8 rating.

There IS a better lens — the Canon 35mm f/1.4L. It’s a professional lens, earning the “L” ranking for Canon’s system. This also means the price is nearly quadruple that of the f/2. So nevermind that.

Sigma makes a 30mm f/1.4 lens that is also getting good reviews at FredMiranda.com, which is where I go to start any lens purchase hunt. It has great reviews from a variety of Real World users for every lens.

In any case, the Sigma is an extra $100 over the Canon, but it’s also a touch wider and a half stop faster. It’d be the fastest lens I’ve ever used. And it’s still about the same price as the Canon 50mm f/1.4. I considered that lens, too, but I’m shying away from 50mm.

Both lenses have had complaints about being soft when wide open, and both have had some auto focus difficulty, according to some voices on the ‘net.

So it’s a toss-up. I can actually get the Canon at the local camera store for a hair under $300, while the Sigma is over $400. If they’re roughly equivalent lenses, then Canon wins handily. But the Sigma does let in more light, which might be a great thing to have in some situations. And it includes a lens hood! (OK, so that’s a $10 advantage. No big whoop.)

The more reviews I read, the more confusing the whole situation becomes. I’m not averse to third party lenses. My Tamron lens is my work horse. So which to go with? I don’t know just yet. I’m just thinking out loud today.

At the same rate, the Nifty Fifty is a notoriously cheap lens. It’s total plastic, and breaks easily. I just learned that lesson personally. It sucks.

And because it’s so cheap, it’s not worth sending out for fixing, because the usual minimum repair charge is more than the cost of the lens, itself.

So, new lens? Yes. I definitely want one. I want a fast prime lens. There’s nothing like the look of a prime lens. I don’t know all the physics reasons for it. They’re a simpler design, so there’s less stuff between the light and my camera’s sensor, I guess. And with that wide open aperture, it’s a great lens for low light. They also tend to be cheaper than zoom lenses, not that any lens in the world is actually “cheap.” So, what to do, what to do.

Tomorrow: The Options.

Pretty cool, actually.

I spent one night cruising YouTube looking at Wiggles videos during the week. I believe now more than ever that what I wrote last week was dead-on: If you know the Wiggles from their TV show, you’re going to hate ‘em. If you know them as a live kids’ band, you’re going to appreciate them a lot more. Watching videos of them in Elvis jumpsuits lip-synching to a medley of their early hits from The Disney Channel circa 2003 is painful. Watching the cheaply-produced show with over-the-top characters is annoying.

But, at the heart of it, the music is catchy and the four members of the band are entertaining. Watching them live on stage, you can feel the chemistry amongst the members of the band, and even with the back-up Wiggly Dancers. Something you don’t get enough of from the concert videos is the improvising and joking around they do between songs, with genuine laughter back and forth.

And they’re not perfect, but at least they didn’t forget any words. I still don’t know how they can do all that singing and dancing at the same time. I’m out of breath just watching them. But, wait, Sam tweeted about that a couple weeks back:

Singing while dancing is similar to holding your breath while swimming.Tiring. Add low oxygen from high altitude = drowning

So there you have it.

Now, I need more concerts to photograph! When’s Dora coming through?

The Wiggles and Wiggly Dancers and Dorothy take a bow

The number one mistake I think most people make in their photographs is in not considering the backgrounds. They can detract from the focal point of a picture or just plain clutter it up with useless detail. Even worse is when a pole appears to be sticking out of someone’s head because the subject is standing in front of a traffic sign or a phone pole.

I don’t think half my pictures would be as good as they are if I had instead been sitting on the floor in front of the stage. All the pics would then have been fighting the busy lighting patterns and colors of the central “Wiggly Circus” display behind the performers. By being to the side of the stage, where the backgrounds for all the pics would be the dark seating area that they didn’t even sell tickets to, I ensured the ability to get flat plain black backgrounds, thus focusing on the performers.

The one hang-up I did have, though, was the speaker located on the near corner of the stage. I had to fight my way around that quite often, mostly in the wider shots. There’s a skill to using foreground elements in landscape photography, but that’s not what I was going for that day.

There’s no perfect position. If I were in the front row on the floor level, all my pics would be up the Wiggles’ noses.

Strangely enough, there were open seats in the first three rows of my section. Only one parent took her kids down there. If I weren’t blocked seven seats in, I might have taken a quick walk down for a couple different pictures, too.