Not sure that you need something that expensive. I bought my wife a Sony DSC-HX400V a few years ago and it's worked-out as a great high-end, point-and-shoot camera, and it cost me a lot less than $1,700. Note that the HX400V appears to still be available, at least it's still on the Sony website, and it's only listed as $450. Now I'm not saying that it's equivalent to the Sony RX 10 Mark IV, but it's still a pretty good camera, for the money.

Pretty much the same for me. My first digital camera was a Canon PowerShot S10, at 2.1Mp, which I purchased in December 2000. I only took 441 images with it.

I then bought a Canon IXUS V, also 2.1Mp, in August 2001, mostly for it's size and convenience. I have 2,379 images taken with it in my archive.

Note that during this time I was still shooting film with my Minolta SLR's, mostly with my XG-M and finally my X-700, last used in August 2006.

Then in September 2003 I bought a Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi, at 5.0 Mp. However, after 3,377 images the sensor failed (virtually every 5.0Mp sensor manufactured eventually failed as they all came from one vendor) three years later.

By then Sony had acquired the camera business from Konica Minolta and they decided to replace all the Minolta cameras where the 5.0Mp sensor had failed, including DiMAGE 7Hi, even if you no longer had a proof of purchase (receipt/invoice), which I think was one of the best things that they could have done since they gained instant loyalty from all of us old time Minolta users (I purchased my first Minolta SLR, an SR-1, in 1968).

So in September 2006 Sony replaced my Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi (free of charge) with a Sony DSC-H2, at 6.0Mp. Now this was an ugly camera and I would never have purchased it on my own, but since it was a freebee, I didn't complain. Now it worked fine and actually took much better videos then the Minolta (after all, that was Sony's forte). There are 3,129 images taken with it in my archive).

In October 2007 I purchased my first DSLR, a Sony A100, at 10.2MP (note that this was a camera that Minolta had originally developed and which they had just started to manufacture when Sony acquired the business. Sony shut down production, made a few changes/upgrades and reintroduced it as the A100). There are 4,259 images in the archive from this camera.

Then in September 2012, a friend, who was moving up to full-frame, sold me a Sony A65 body, at 24.3Mp, for a price I couldn't pass-up. I shot 2,140 images with it.

In December 2013 I purchased a mirrorless Sony NEX-3N, at 16.1Mp, ostensibly for my wife but I liked the size and convenience so much that I started to use it more and more, particularly when I was traveling where in the past I had mostly carried my old Canon IXUS V point-and-shoot. There are 2,174 images in the archive taken with this camera.

By February 2016 I was sold on mirrorless cameras and upgraded to a Sony a6000, at 24.2Mp. I have 7,951 images taken with this camera in my archive.

Then in December 2020, I upgraded to a Sony a6500, also 24.2Mp, and relegated the a6000 to my macro kit. So far there are 3,746 images in my archive taken with this camera, which is now my mainline camera.

But getting back on topic, I think that 24Mp is more than adequate for my needs. I don't make that many prints, and when I do, it's mostly 4 x 6 snapshots which an occasional larger print for framing.

That being said, the largest print that I've ever had made was a family portrait taken in 2008, which was shot with the Sony A100, a 10.2Mp camera. We had it printed on a 'canvas' type material and framed. It's a 20 x 34 inch enlargement and it looks fine, so I suspect that my current 24.2Mp cameras will be more than enough.

It was a small town located on the exact center-line of the 2017 eclipse. Besides, we planned this for on the way home, to California, from being in Michigan for a couple of weeks, so it just worked out OK. The only issue was that we were planning to drop down into Texas to visit some family and friends before heading home, but Hurricane Harvey hit the area just a couple of days after the eclipse, so we headed West after making a couple of stops in Kansas.

I don't recall a previous 'Looking Up' challenge, perhaps it was before I started participating in these, so most of my 'Looking Up' shots are not all that new, but here they are anyway:

Looking up the side of the Chem-Bio classroom building on the campus of Michigan Technological University (my alma mater) in Houghton, Michigan - May 1970 - Minolta SRT-101, 35mm


Looking up the side of a couple of smokestacks at the old Ford Motor Company sawmill in Pequaming, Michigan - September 1970 - Minolta SRT-101, 35mm


Looking up at the underside of the water tower at the old Ford Motor Company sawmill in Pequaming, Michigan - September 1970 - Minolta SRT-101, 35mm


Looking up the side of the Monarch Pine at the Hartwick Pines State Park near Grayling, Michigan - October 1976 - Minolta SRT-101, 35mm


Looking up at the Blood Red Lunar Eclipse, as seen from our backyard in Irvine, California - April 2014 - Sony A65, 400mm


Looking up at Saturn, as seen from our backyard in Irvine, California - June 2017 - Sony a6000, 400mm (this image has been cropped significantly)


Looking up at a total Solar Eclipse, as seen from York, Nebraska - August 2017 - Sony a6000, 400mm


Looking up at the New Moon, in the Arms of the Old, as seen from the backyard of our son's house in Los Angeles, California - July 2019 - Sony a6000, 55- 210mm


Looking up at Jupiter, and five of her Moons, as seen from our backyard in Irvine, California - November 2022 - Sony a6500, 400mm (X2) (this image has been cropped significantly)


Looking up at the recent Solar Eclipse, as seen from the backyard of our son's house in Katy, Texas - April 2024 - Sony a6500, 18-135mm (X2)

Some image of Spring, from around our house:

Some of my wife's cactus and succulent plants at our house, in Irvine, California - April 2024 - Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max


This is what a vegetable garden looks like when you have a small backyard in Southern California - April 2024 - Sony a6500, 18-135mm


Some more of our vegetable garden in Irvine, California - April 2024 - Sony a6500, 18-135mm


Some of my wife's flowers, in this case her Amaryllis plants - April 2024 - Sony a6500, 18-135mm


Some more of my wife's cactus and succulent plants - April 2024 - Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max


And again, some more of my wife's cactus and succulent plants - April 2024 - Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max


And our Easter Lilies, albeit a little late this year, along the entry way into our house - May 2024 - Sony a6500, 18-135mm

My normal lens (on my APS-C camera) is 18-135mm, so NO, 18mm in not wide enough, that's why I have a 10-18mm wide-angle.

I never go anywhere without a wide-angle. You can always crop a wide-angle shot 'down', but you can't 'crop' a normal/telephoto image 'out.'

I'm going to find out as I just ordered one. They were having a 25% off sale so it cost less than $65 and since they had an option to pay for it through Amazon Prime, I got free shipping. In the end, with sales tax, it was just under $70, about a $100 less than the Weberly. And when I get it, I'll let all of you know what I think of it. Note that I've purchased items by Neewer in the past and have been more than satisfied and so I'm hoping for the same experience here, but you'll know, one way or the other.

Yes, that looks like a very nice set-up, for when you're using a long lens with it's own mount. However, if you're just using a camera mounted on a monopod, the Wimberly does not provide the ability to switch the camera from landscape to portrait orientation. Granted, if you're using a long lens with it's own mount, you can rotated the camera using that feature (as seen in the video), but when working with a camera alone, there's no capability to do that with the Wimberly. That's why, in an earlier post, I mentioned the mount from Neewer, as it offers that option, and it's less than half the price:

https://neewer.com/products/neewer-gm39-gimbal-tripod-head-66603927

A few years ago I bought my wife a Sony DSC-HX400V camera as she wanted something 'higher' end, but not something where she had to change lens all the time. It has a 50X optical zoom and shots 20.4Mp images.

While I prefer my Sony a6500, if I was in a situation like you or I was limited to having only a single camera with me, I would use this one.

I agree, all of the Epson Perfection Photo flatbed scanners should work fine. I have a V550 and have scanned many frames of 120 negatives, both color and B&W. And I can also recommend the VueScan software as I use it with all three of my scanners:

My Epson Perfection V550 Photo flatbed scanner with the 120/220 film holder in place

And as engineers, we also notice everything around us that's not working quite right and how it could hurt you if it goes seriously wrong. And since I worked for McDonnell Douglas for over 11-years, spending a lot time around aerospace engineers, you learn a lot more about airplanes and what can go wrong than you really want to know, like where to look, when boarding a plane, to see how old it is (date the airworthiness certificate was issued) or why, about 8 to 10-rows back, there's always a section of the fuselage where it looks like a window should have gone but there's nothing there.

Yes, sometimes I'm jealous of my wife as she's oblivious of everything that could go wrong around us. In her case, she only notices people's poor dental hygiene (she worked over 30-years in dental practices). I guess it could be worse, she could've worked for a proctologist

Oh, I still considered myself an engineer as the software company that I went to work for was selling software TO engineers and which they used everyday, and my role in the company was to work with these engineers to make sure that we were meeting their needs and keeping up with what we were offering them and that we were keeping up with what they were doing with our software, and so as to maintain my credibility I retained my professional engineering license up until I retired 8-years ago.

Thank you. Traveling as extensively as I was able to, during my nearly 50 year career as an engineer and working for a software company, brought me to many interesting places both here at home and abroad. And being a photographer, albeit an amateur, I was always ready to get some pictures of where I was at and what I was seeing.