I have taken my iMacs and older MacBooks in with non apple memory and had no issues with warranty (older MacBooks could have memory replaced) this is with apple care in all the machines. Yes. Swapping the hd for an sad will void the warranty. Other than a hdd failure in the previous iMac and in a mbpro I've been fortunate and never had to use my apple care.

Memory is king for photo processing, and for the other types of work I do, 16g is(imo) barely enough for a primary system (I do have an 8g mbpro that I use when traveling)

You do not need to buy memory from apple. The 16g will probably be 2 8g sticks. If I remember correctly, the iMac can actually take 4 sticks. Go to crucial memory and look up for the model iMac you are getting and then max out. My iMac has 48g, and one of these days I'm going to put the ssd I bought a year ago in it.

Sure. Pm me and I will give you PayPal instructions and you can give me your address and I will ship once PayPal is donre

Lens hood included. I'd say no mor than $20 usps priority shipping

I've got 2 lenses that I'm selling.

#1 17-50 APSC (I have upgraded to full frame) I'm not sure how to find the model.. but on the gold band around the lens it has (ASPHERICAL (ld) XR Di II SP TAMRON AF 17-50 f/2.8 (IF)). This is NOT a VC lense (no image stabilization). B and H lists this lense at $299. I'm asking $150 for it.

#2 200-500 f/5-6.3 (I upgraded to a 150-600 since it lets me carry less gear when shooting) Again the Gold band has "(LD) Di SP TAMRON AF 200-500mm f/5-6.3 (IF). This lens is no longer available, replaced with the 150-600mm lense (B&H list for 150-600m is $889) again, this is not an image stabilized lense I'm asking $400

Reasonable offers will be entertained. Each is offered individually. Both lenses served me well, and have had limited use (90% of my shooting is with a 70-200 f/2.8). PM if interested.

At machu pichu be careful with tripods. Sometimes they prevent you from bringing them into the site. I was able to justify my monopod as a walking stick. But others on the photo expedition were declined to bring their full tripods. I went in April last year and had no issues with fog or flat light. I was bummed that we could not get in until after sunrise, but was suprised that there was an effective second sunrise at the top. Get up early and catch the first bus to the site you can. It will reduce the number of people milling around and possibly get you some nice false sunrise shots

+1 for the cotton carrier system. I recently shot a charity run and it was great to be able to zip around on my scooter to various vantage points without worrying about the camera and 600mm lenses bouncing around on a sling. It also makes carrying the rig effortless. It looks a bit dorky, but I am more interested in function over form

I'm looking to find sister, other than eBay, to advertise used equipment for sale. For example I recently upgraded my big zoom to the sigma 105-600 and have my gently used tamron 200-500 to sell. I know I can send it to adaroma and they will give me a quote, but to be honest I believe I can get more on a private sale (they naturally give less than they will sell it for in order to make a profit, no argument with that, they have to make money). I figure that there are some sites dedicated to enthusiasts that have for sale sections. My apologies if this is not an appropriate topic for UHH

That is what as will sell you. Being an it guy I know it can support more so I simply bought the required memory sticks. I'm not 100% sure I think it could o to 128gig, I know 64 is do able

Do yourself a big favor and get at least a 4K monitor (5K is prefered). I use an iMac with 48G of ram (emphasize RAM over processor speed, all the processor speed in the world won't do you any good if you are paging because you have insufficient RAM). Get a system that you can add RAM to, a mac book pro (which is great to travel with) is limited in how much RAM it can be bought with it (can't upgrade) vs an iMac which you can add memory to (at least currently). Regarding monitor.. the Imac is a 5K monitor, and I used to have a regular (not 4K) as my second display, worlds of difference, I added a 4K for the second and now if i have to go to a non-4/5K monitor i get headaches.

Get 2 strap wrenches (a pipe wrench will gouge into the aluminum and mar it). Use one strap wrench on the tripod and one on the ball head. A strap wrench will tighten as pressure is applied and give you more grip and torque on both the tripod and the mount. Penetrating oil my help, but usually it is used for when things are rusted, freezing both the tripod and ball head together may work, but I doubt it as both will shrink at the same time diminishing the effect, but it is worth a try. You can get cheap strap wrench at harbor tools. Another thing to try is heating the ball head. Stick just the head into some boiling water, this should cause it to expand (in auto work one often will head one fastener to get expansion using a torch, but don't use a torch on the ballhead it will likely damage it. A heat gun may also work, but may be to hot and melt any plastic inside the head. Good luck

What I plan on doing is use tsa locks that have a cable instead of a shackle. I can put 2 into each lock hole in the pelican case. Each has a different combination which will thwart cracking the combination somewhat. It won't do anything for corupt tsa agents but should help against bagage handlers. Of course this probably gives more indication that it is containing valuables. The airlines should offer reasonable additional baggage insurance to flyers so you can add insurance when you need it. I do wonder what is motivating this, the synic in me says it's to increase checked luggage fees, as it's absurd from a security perspective. Not to mention all the laptop lithium batteries now being in the hold of the airplane which I thought they were against (try removing the battery from a MacBook).

See if your pelican case can put 2 tsa locks per hole (4 locks) all with different combinations. Tsa can unlock them all and as log as they put them all back on it will quadruple the time it takes for someone to unlock them. Of course this may also indicate that something of value is n place so it may become permanently misplaced. I am working on a setup that would allow a cable to be looped through the holes in the case such that multiple locks are more feasible. The issue I am running across is finding a cable where the loop Ferrell is small enough to fit through the hole in the case

I have to use the tsa locks in work I don't like it but as you said there is no real alternative. A baggage handler has sufficient time to 'loose' a bag to unlock. My equipment is in a pretty nondescript case so it is not obvious and pray it does not get swiped

As a long term it professional and an avid amateur photographer. Memory is king. All the processor speed you buy gets lost if you are paging memory to disk ( yes, even solid state disk). I currently use a 1 year ole iMac with theni5 processor and 48g of ram and a 1 tb ssd. I've also run the same programs on a i7 Mac book pro with 16g of ram. Hands down the iMac is vastly faster with light room, and I can only think that Photoshop will be similar. You get the best use of cpu when everything is in memory. Muy brother does financial modeling and long ago I told him to go for ram over CPUs (large spreadsheets are memory pigs as are pohotos). Buy the i5 iMac and then buy after market memory (imacs are still customer upgradeable memory wise). My iMac never swaps when in loghtroom... My macbook pro SWAPO's looks crazy in light room.