I often wonder why there has to be absolute silence at a golf match when the golfer is hitting a ball that is standing still, while at a baseball game the crowd is yelling and twirliing rally rags while a batter is facing a pitcher about to hurl a 90 mile an hour plus baseball at him. The good news about the ball game is, you can not hear the shutter clicks.

Three days ago we got back from six weeks cruising with Viking on combination of river and ocean cruises. All in Europe. Europe is much more serious about contain the virus than we are in the US. In order to enter any restaurant, museum. Store or other public building we had to show our CDC vaccination record card. Also masks must be worn at all times, eating excepted. I felt safer there than in the US. All guests on Viking must be vaccinated. Every day we take a PCR rest, have our temperature checked and wear a contact trader. Once again I felt safer on Viking than I do at home. With regard to cameras I took 2 Oly EM1 Mk iiis along with the following Pro lenses: 7-14, 14-100 and 40-150. Came back with several thousand photos and great memories.

I have both the E1 Mk iii and then 1x. When traveling by air I take the E1 as it is lighter and more compact. When traveling by car, I take both. X1,as was pointed out, is perfectky balanced for the 150-400mm pro lens. Battery grip is integrated into the 1X and holds 2 batteries. The 1X also has GPS. If you don't have the 150-400 lens, a good upgrade is the EM1 Mk iii.

I have a 1 TB Sandisk Extreme SSD. I have used it last month on an eight day Iceland cruise and am currently half way through a 20 day Med cruise. The drive is fast and flawless and only 3 inches by 1.5 inches and thin.

I sold two lenses to them and gave them my banking info with nor problem. As was pointed out every check you write has routing number and account number.

DxO PureRaw is not a plug in for Lightroom or Photoshop. It is a stand alone program that allows the user to drag and drop raw files into the program. The processed photo can then be exported as a DNG directly into Lightroom. It can them be imported into Lightroom.

I am currently in Iceland on a Tauck tour on a Ponant ship. We need proof of vaccination, had to register on line with Iceland to receive a QR code that must be shown before boarding the plane. Code is scanned prior to having a mandatory Covid test upon landing in Iceland. We had to quarantine in our hotel room until we received a message that we were negative for Covid. It took about 5 hours from when we were tested. Then no masks were required in Iceland. However our ship requires. a mask.

Sorry Eyglar is at iceland_photoshoot.

Eyglo Iliad is a local photographer. You can read her at iceland_photoshoo.

I put an order in with B&H back in November. So far, I have heard nothing. I am currently using the 100-400mm f5-6.3 lens on the MX1 with satisfactory results.

[quote=willy6419]any suggestions that work? I bought 'freehands', thinking the thumb/index finger flipdown would be nice, but the magnet gets so cold, they are actually worse than bare, so now use a winter glove left hand, bare hand as long as possible on the right shooting hand.

Tricks discovered?

Thanks[/quo

I have been using "Palmyth Magnetic Leather Ice Fishing Gloves Convertible Mittens Ski Gloves with Thinsulate 3M Warm for Cold Weather and Winter Men Women Photography Snow Shooting" from Amazon in the cold Upstate NY Winter. It is a "lobster claw" type glove - three fingers together in a mitten while the index finger and thumb are separate. The index finger and thumb are magnetic flaps. The magnets do not get cold. My fingers get very warm after a mile into my 5 mile trail walk. I also find that 90% of the time I can operate my camera with out using the finger and thumb flaps.

OK. We pulled your chestnuts out of the fire ;-)

Our English was good enough to save your tuchus in WWII ;-)

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I recently wanted to sell my Olympus 300mm f/4 Pro lens. I got an initial offer from KEH for $1100.00. I sent them the lens and after a week of inspecting the lens they offered me $654. They said there were problems with the lens, something about water in the lens. I had them send the lens back to me. I looked in the lens and couldn't see anything. I took a series of photos and blowing up to 400% could see nothing wrong. I decided to send the lens to MPB. The initial offer was $1120.00. Sending the lens was easy as they supplied a free shipping label. When they received it, I got an e-mail that it will take about a week to check it out. After a week their offer was $1120.00. I accepted and the money was deposited in my bank account that day. Not sure what KEH saw that MPB didn't.