If it was only one shitty ancient system it would be one thing. For the company I work for it’s about 10 big interconnected mainframe systems with hundreds of non-mainframe systems cobbled together around them. They’ve been in place since the 80s, but you can trace their business logic back to the 50s and 60s. They start at cataloging all our parts and get into purchasing components from suppliers, describing the products we assemble, managing the supply chains for our factories, order management from our customers, etc.

Replacing it all will be massive chore, but it’s becoming more and more clear that we need to. At the end of the day, capturing and understanding data in them takes so much skill that we have entire departments dedicated to being an interface between the actual users and the mainframe. The business rules might have worked before the products we build contained electronic controls, but everything is starting to implode now that “parts” also includes software. This has resulted in manual workaround on top of manual workaround.

Ditto for mobile. IMO the mobile site wasn’t great, but I haven’t been on much lately.

Canon kept their RF mount locked down, but has been opening it up a tiny bit recently. This is a fairly new lens, so it’s probably been optimized for mirrorless. If that is the case, it won’t be compatible with DSLR bodies due to flang distances. You can push a DSLR optimized lens out further to mount on a MILC body. You can’t move a MILC optimized lens closer to a DSLR body.

Haha, tell me why I’m on e-mount without telling me why I’m on e-mount. Canon and Sony seem to be on par for easy AF, but the back catalog of lenses on e-mount is hard to beat.

Hopefully Canon continues to let more third part glass use their mount.

My electric chainsaws and weed whacker always start. Eventually our lawn tractor will kick the bucket and I’ll either convert it to electric or buy one.

I like this photo a lot more than the other one! I think it’s the symmetry of the foliage creating a frame for the coaster.

Depending where you live, it can be really hard to find ethonal free gas. As an added bonus, carburators hate having ethonal sit in them. They’ll develop a varnish. Carbs also don’t like sitting partially dry and getting all the fuel out of them is a massive pain. Yay lawn equipment.

Both. Ethonal is still corrosive and the majority of fuel systems these days are compatible with E15. That said, check your owners manual.

I was really surprised how much difference even the 10mm tube made on a 35mm lens. I am not sure how far I’m going to ultimately take this because I think I want a longer focal length (yay flighty bugs) and the amount of tube needed would be a bit excessive. I had OK luck with my 150-500, which offers a minimum focal distance of around 23" and a magnification of 0.32 at the wide end. Sadly, zooming pushes the minimum focal distance out.

Like a magnifier that goes in front of the lens? I’ll have to do some googling, thanks!

I do like the idea of flipping a lens around and am very tempted to give it a shot. I feel like this would work better on manual glass. Most of my mirrorless stuff is focus by wire, with the exception of an older sigma 35mm. They all have electronic apertures :(

These extensions tubes have all the electrical contacts for AF to keep working. I’m using an A9 and the AF seems unphased as long as you’re under the maximum focal distance.

/nocontext, lol. Browsing new? I was hoping the text in the image would give those subed here a good hint :(

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_High_Bridge for anyone looking for slightly more information.

Large swaths of Detroit aren’t that great. That’s probably true of any major city, but Detroit is 143 square miles. Manhattan is 23. Thar creates a lot of opportunity to be in a not-so-great part of a city whose population is roughly a third of what it was 70 years ago. The city runs a land bank you can buy decapitated houses from for $1k. Even on the retail market, large swaths of the city are very cheap.

All that said, Detroit might finally be turning around. The city experienced its first year of population growth in forever last year and more and more people I interact with are either visiting the city and spending money there or are actively considering moving there. There are also a lot of Detroit run small businesses popping up and the region has a strong “buy local” vibe to it.

/Someone who lives nearby and would love to see the city succeed.

Counterpoint: there are plenty of well off folks taking classified drugs recreationally out of boredom that become addicted. I came from a high cost of living suburbia and there really wasn’t a lot to do as a teenager due to high property values and taxes. Recreational spaces, especially aimed at teens, were basically non-existent. I imagine the same is also true in rural areas, but for different reasons.

I just learned these exist! They’re very cool looking.

A very related question to ask is: did your parents, or extended family, ever help you financially?

Here’s my answer.

Have I ever received help from my parents and/or extended family? Yes. I was able to live rent free after high school while I found my way. When I eventually started college I was able to live at home and commute. My family started a college fund for me when I was little, so I was able to cover about 15% of my in-state tuition. We also got a cash loan from my Grandma to put toward a down payment that we paid back over the course of a few years. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to buy our house.

Am I getting help from my parents or extended family now? No, I haven’t for years. Money and support have started flowing the other direction. I’ve given my mom a (used) car and also let her live with us for a year and a half while she switched careers.

It is all about trade-offs, but the tradeoffs have to be situational.

Considering only shutter speed and a “static” subject, you have to consider whether or not your subject is actually static. For example, are there flexible things present (plants, etc) and is it windy? For something like a desert landscape with zero motion your shutter speed can be as low as you want it to be (note that you might need to block some light from reaching the sensor using a ND filter). For “still” people you probably don’t want to go too low because we’re constantly in motion. That said, ever rule was made to be broken. Want to photo stars? Don’t use a super long shutter speed - you’ll get star trails. What’s that, you want star trails? Bump shutter speed even more so they look intentionally vs somewhat smeared balls of light. Sports and wildlife are basically the only scenario where you need a fast shutter speed… until you want some motion blur. Granted, motion blue and sports will still probably be a fairly fast shutter speed.

Aperture follows a similar arc - do you want shallow depth of field, do you want to see more of the foreground/background, maybe you forgot your ND filter and want a slow shutter so you have to stop down, maybe it’s really dark so you have to use a fast (wide aperture) lens wide open.

The only thing you universally want to take one way is ISO and that way is low. Unless you want some grain. Or you’re shooting something with motion indoors and you can’t compromise any more on shutter speed or depth of field. Or your lens aperture is already wide open and you still need more light.

When staring off you might want to try shutter or aperture priority, based on the situation, and let the camera handle the other two values. Heck, I still do this 95% of the time 15 years later.

Or random application availability and/or ease of use.

Two cases in point:

• Photo Mechanic. It makes it really easy/fast to sort through tons of photos. There are some Linux compatible alternatives, but they’re just not as good
• Fusion 360. There are a couple of things you can do to make it work, but since Linux isn’t officially supported the install process can be a bit fiddily and there’s no guarantee that an update won’t break things.

Things are certainly better now than they have been in the past, but if you’re somewhat time limited (eg your computer is more of a tool than a thing to spend time tweaking) Linux can still be a bit offputting - especially if some of the core applications you use aren’t officially supported.