That is not entirely correct. You need a doctors note that says that you are disabled.

I have no artistic ability nor do I even have the ability to understand what makes one better than the other, and as such I can not tell a good photo from a bad one, within reason. Perhaps to be more accurate I should really say that I can not tell a good one from a great one. Be forewarned that the rest of this post is all about me. Just to give some insight into my experience I will tell you the following. When I was 9 I inherited a newspaper and I kept most of the photography equipment they had. I had a good negative projector for printing pictures, along with a Yashica, a Pentax, a Miranda and lastly a GAF along with various lenses light meters, filters and etc. They were all 35mm SLR's from the 60's and early 70's. I taught myself black and white developing and printed my own pictures, but I never liked any of my pictures. It was less than a decade before I lost interest in photography due to my lack of ability. I knew how to use the cameras from a mechanical standpoint, but that is all. Then after I got older and began working as an engineer I purchased a few digital point and shoot cameras to document what I worked on for my customers and for my own records, but nothing that was meant to be artistic. It was mostly just pictures of damaged machinery and equipment components and cracks in decks, bulkheads, and hulls and other various problems that I was hired to correct, or discrepancies that I found in the course of my work that needed to be repaired before they caused additional problems along with after photos of the same items after I performed the necessary repairs. Although I suppose that from a macro perspective some of them might have possessed artistic qualities, it was never my intention. Recently I bought a D5300 and a D3400 and my hope is to learn everything I can about using all of their features, and then maybe if I am lucky some of the photos that I take will be worth keeping. I do not expect to be able to consistently create photos that anyone would want to hang on a wall, but I am hoping that someday I may be able to look through the viewfinder and think, "I might even keep this one." I'm not going to get my hopes up though because I have very little natural artistic ability or imagination outside of the realm of engineering. I can make technical drawings but anything else but stick figures is beyond me. I lost my soul mate in 2008 which broke my heart, and I broke my back in 2010 which left me paraplegic and has really changed my perspective on just about everything and I now experience emotions that I never felt before, mostly just extreme sadness, but I do feel emotions now where before I was basically limited to feelings of only happiness and anger. I mention this because in my experience artistic people are also very emotional. I would be interested in learning to see the world with an artistic vision and be able to capture images that makes someone, anyone, stop and say "wow, that picture is really cool," if that is even possible... And now back to my question, can I learn to take amazing photographs or is that really only possible for individuals with brains that are wired with an inherent natural artistic ability?

are they both at the center of the same focal point as well?

This may or not be pertinent to this discussion, and I don't know all about camera lenses but if the distance from the lens to the sensor is different between an FX and a DX body then that would definitely affect what the sensor sees through the same FX lens.

Yep, Just watch out for the shoulder as it is often very soft sand. I only rode that once and lost my ability to walk due to a spinal cord injury from a sharp left turn that I didn't quite make it through.

I bought the D3400, and then the D5300 and gave the D3400 to my daughter. From what you described though I would recommend the D3400 as it does what you want that I have no use for, it's the connectivity. You can download all of your photos to your phone automatically with the D3400, I didn't want that. Be sure to upgrade the firmware though for it to work correctly.

Thank you for the links as well. I am more and more leaning to the possibility of buying one of these incredibly inexpensive lenses for my small collection...

Thank you, your link was both informational and inspiring!

Ok, I have no doubt that at he price point that they are selling thee things for they are of very low quality and may not even be worth the money that they are asking, but then again I may be wrong. Does anyone have any actual hands on experience using any of these lenses, and of those of you that have actually shot photos with one of these lenses what can you tell me about the actual results? Are the shots you took with one of their lenses better or worse than you would get using say a Meade refractor telescope? If you are careful with them and do not drop them will they hold up for a reasonable amount of time, or will they break from just their own weight hanging off of the camera body? anything else that you can tell me would be appreciated. I am assuming that most of you out there can not tell me anything because their low price is too low for most to even take a chance on them.

Thank you all for taking the time and sharing your obviously extensive knowledge with me on this subject. I learned about bracketing from the dummies book for the D3400 and in that book they discussed adjusting the white balance up two steps and down two steps from the original when using bracketing for HDR photographs which was why I thought that it had to do with white balance. Now it makes more sense, although I will need to read the manual for my d5300 a bit more before I will attempt to use it myself. My biggest problem is that I got pretty good at using the functions on my d3400 and them bought my d5300 because it could do some stuff I wanted that the d3400 could not do. Then I gave the d3400 to my daughter. I guess that I really should have read the features more closely on the d3400 before I bought it, because I made the mistake of assuming that being the latest camera that it would do everything that the previous older models would do, but was wrong.

I've won awards in poetry, but I am not a professional poet, in fact I don't even think that I am very good.

Neat!!!

This is probably a stupid question, but that's ok because I never claimed to be a very knowledgeable photographer. If I understand correctly bracketing is taking 3 pictures with three different white balance values, one low one mid and one high of the exact same scene. However since the exposure can be adjusted after the fact then if you are shooting in raw then bracketing has no place. Since most of the professional photographers here seem to say they always shot in raw, the bracketing must not be used by professional photographers. Is that an accurate assumption?

I agree with the other members that posted above. I read your prior threads and since you said they were homophobic I concluded that you were referring to the person that used the word "queer" in their post. However they did not call you a queer nor did they even use it in a context that I felt was even in reference to homosexuals though and I don't think that their post was offensive nor meant to be offensive. I think that if that post offended you that the problem is that you are overly sensitive to any usage of that word regardless of context and as such you are reading something into the post that wasn't really meant.

Thank you everyone for the information, and especially the videos on lens construction. Being an engineer, I find those to be very interesting. Although I guess that my question has been answered for the most part I guess my next question would be why don't they just make the best lenses that they can at a reasonable price for everyone rather than only making avery small number of the better lenses, as I'm sure we all want the best that we can afford, and if the prices were lower we could all afford the best.