Iron_Dreamer

Cheers and happy birthday JP!

Happy birthday!

Have a great birthday!

Pretty hilarious marketing stunt there. Quite enjoying the Pixel 7 Pro I picked up recently. It's nice finally having AF on the UWA lens of a smartphone.

I'll send you a PM

Thanks all. Had a great day out in the Eastern Sierra visiting a few of my favorite spots. The conditions couldn't have been better for a perfect fall day out.

Houston in summer with no AC. Can't picture much worse. Glad you survived!

So many great memories with Matt the (ever) Younger 🍻

Years ago I read a book called the "Tyranny of Choice" about that very conundrum. It's a funny one though, which is more tyrannical, what to do with the extremely versatile, malleable RAW files I got from a very modern one-body, two-lens setup, or what to rifle out of Ric's gear closet for any particular given outing, to get files with more "look" baked in? These are the amusing wonderments of life, no? Not to suggest I don't have a gear closet of my own, though my recent experience is perhaps inspiring me to cull some of the DSLR lenses I still have hanging around, good as they are.

I've always been intrigued by the Foveon cameras, but never managed to convince myself to tolerate the trade-offs. Nearly convinced myself to try a DP2m a couple of times, but just never took the plunge, and figured if the technology truly had merit, eventually Sigma or someone else would develop it into something more usable. While perhaps my previous post made me come off as someone who loves doing work in post, if anything I am the opposite. It's my least favorite part of digital photography, but a necessary evil to get the results I want. Anything I can do upfront in the shooting process to make post work less demanding appeals to me (hence capturing optimal data), but as far as I can tell, there's still no algorithm that can predict the look I want consistently and bake it into a JPEG for me. The closest I can do is a few sets of my own Adobe presets, but even those are dependent on correct exposure to work as intended and are far from universal. I do take plenty of more spontaneous / less pre-visualized photos, but generally working from the same approach of data-gathering that informs my aperture/SS/ISO/focus point decisions, and is familiar and well-trained enough to often not require much more than a reaction rather than involved thought. That is to say, I can spend more effort thinking about what goes in the frame and where, rather than how to execute the shot itself. And It's that puzzle of what goes where, how, and why, that ultimately I think I find most rewarding and enjoyable about photography. I don't see the alarm with finding charm and enjoyment in older gear either, and I can certainly see the appeal of various traits of various lenses and bodies that have been around over the years. I personally prefer to have a fairly small footprint of "stuff" in my life, so am naturally drawn to things that are closer to do-it-all, than extremely characterful specialists. In photography, much like in audio, this has generally tended to draw me to devices at the leading edge of technical development, often derided as dull, cold, soul-less, or the like by certain other enthusiasts. Put me in a target-rich environment, and I do believe I'd enjoy shooting it with any camera. But I'd enjoy it more shooting one with fewer caveats, limitations, and work-arounds required to get the results I want. I'd probably enjoy the results I got from those cameras, (perhaps even enjoy some of their results MORE, depending on the circumstances?), but I think I would enjoy the journey to those results less. And I've come to discover that I enjoy the journey of photography as much as or perhaps more than the result. I just spent 4 days in the backcountry of Kings Canyon NP. I brought one camera that I know very well, and two lenses, and had a glorious time searching through scenes to find compositions I liked, and capturing them fairly effortlessly with files that I knew would stand up well and turn out great, due to the incredible and consistent performance of that gear. I didn't have to worry about running out of dynamic range, having inconsistent acuity across the frame, name your photographic malady, basically. I just had to concern myself with getting my camera to the right place at the right time with the optimal settings, and know that the results wouldn't disappoint me. And at first look, they haven't. I've scarcely ever had more fun with a camera. But I understand someone could say exactly the same thing about doing nighttime urban photography with a Holga, and it would be completely true for them as well.

Those SOOC JPEG's or...? Is this a bayer-filter camera? Color is just one of those super-subjective things that varies so much from person to person, RAW converter to RAW converter, etc. I think people often outsource the creative work of color palette management/selection to their equipment (be it hardware or software), in much the way audiophiles outsource EQ to pairs of headphones or even cables. Throw in a dose of "retro is inherently better", etc. I never found myself in love with the supposedly great "FUJI COLORS" over the time I used their cameras, and the JPEG engine of the Sony RX-100 (I) and A6000 were hot garbage. However, I've never really owned a camera I couldn't get colors I liked out of, in post, including those. I think most digital cameras of at least the last 10 years offer SO MUCH latitude in post, that most people don't know, can't conceive of what to do with it all, and find their creativity more stimulated by the limitations of/look produced by older cameras. I'm from the Thom Hogan school of thought, i.e. capture optimal data in the field (s/n ratio, sharpness, focus, framing), then massage in post to fit your vision. I'm still floored by what I can capture with a 45MP full-frame sensor and the latest lenses. I think if anything it generally exceeds my abilities as an artist, and I can see why many would find that intimidating/challenging. I know I do at times.

PM me with your info including serial #, let me know who you talked to. I think we can do better, I can get info about your headphone directly from the lead tech for CRBN.

Reminds me of sticking a vintage film-era ultrawide lens on a high-res FF sensor. Smearpocalypse!

Happy birthday, have a fun trip!

I see a couple of cameras I once owned on that list, most notably the Sony DSC-R1 (which she amusingly for our crowd calls "R10"). While that was a very amusingly unusual camera that took great images for its' time, I can't say I miss it. But I've never been one to be sentimental about gear/toys, it's always been upgrade and move along. Personally, I can't imagine the mental weight of owning so much stuff. I think I've got 2 camera bodies and 12 lenses and have definitely been thinking of downsizing a bit.