They're easier to take than to explain.

I had a newbie here the other day, she was terrified of the concept. I stepped outside my door with her, did one hand-held. Came back inside and stitched them in Lightroom. Her jaw dropped. Could not believe how easy it was - so I told her to go outside, take a sample exposure reading and use the settings to make a manual exposure, hold the camera in portrait orientation just like I did, find something in the center of the image and move the camera to the side, placing that object that was centered now at the side - for a 50% overlap, and repeat. She came back in, giddy, and couldn't wait to see what she took. A minute later she was blown away, and started cursing herself for not trying this sooner.

Then I showed her the multi-row pano head i just put together. I think she instantly got GAS . . .

Astrophotography: When you choose your lens, go wide and go fast. It takes a LOT of experimenting, but you need to kick your ISO up a bit, well over 1200. Also, get yourself two apps, one is a dark sky finder, the other is a moon phase app. You need to do starscapes with a new moon. Also, choose a nice foreground, light it up with a flashlight on a stand, high as you can get it, somewhere off to the side for side lighting. Did I mention you need a tripod and your exposures need to be 15-30 seconds? Like I said, you need to experiment to get good exposures, and you probably wont do your best first time out. But keep at it.

Out here in the high desert of Oregon, (Prineville). the forest fire smoke let up a bit. I and a few of my students went out Saturday and Sunday night to try and get a few shots. One student used a Canon Rebel with 18-something kit lens. I haven't heard about results yet. I used a Sony a7s with a Samyang 14mm f2.8, Sigma 12-24mm f4.5-5.6 , Minolta 28mm f2.8 and a Minolta 50mm f1.4. I got one shooting star out of about 100 shots. but not that great. Another student used a Sony a7rll with a Samyang 14mm f2.8 and a Canon 24-105mm. She said that she got 2 frames out of 100 that had shooting stars. We never saw the predicted 60-70 shooting stars per hour. It was more like one every 10 minutes. The MilkyWay was fantastic.

It's not the resonance in the camera body that causes vibration. It's the moving mirror and shutter. If you google shutter shock or vibration you will see a lot of good info, even pertaining to some mirrorless cameras like the Sony A7:

http://www.sonyalphaforum.com/topic/6403-how-to-solve-the-a7r-shutter-shock-problem-without-adding-weight-to-the-camera/

https://diglloyd.com/blog/2014/20140116_1-Sony-A7R-shutter-vibration.html

https://www.discoverdigitalphotography.com/2015/what-are-mirror-slap-and-shutter-shock/

Carbon fiber tripods with thick legs and high quality heads are the best way to mitigate this type of vibration, along with solid technique. Don't expect a $200 tripod and head combo to be anywhere as stable as a proper tripod. There are many myths that need to be put to rest - a tripod needs to have 2x the load capacity of your gear, a heavy tripod is better than a light one, there is no difference between aluminum and carbon, and the best one I heard yet - if the tripod can support bowling ball, it should be good enough.

There zooms that are as sharp as primes and vice versa. Broad generalizations ought to be ignored. Old zooms were, as you have observed, often not as sharp as the new stuff.

The overall goal for sharp, clear, high quality images is to use the lowest ISO, fastest shutter speed, and the sharpest aperture. For many lenses the sharpest aperture is often 2- 3 stops from wide open. Some lenses, like long telephoto primes, are often sharpest at maximum aperture. Exceptions to the above goals are often made for creative interpretation - like using a slow shutter speed combined with flawless panning technique to show movement, or using a large aperture to isolate the subject with shallow depth of field, or a tiny aperture to have deep DoF.

For pros, the deciding factor is the client, who will demand a specific level of quality. Typically a pro will be able to justify the best quality gear, including a support system (or any other component) that will not fail at a critical moment. Anyone who desires that high level of quality will either buy the best gear, or do the necessary homework to find suitable substitutes, usually keeping an eye on budget.

And for the naysayers that claim they have never had shutter shock or mirror vibration, please describe the gear, setup, technique, and post a result.

I no longer even think about or worry about prime vrs. zoom sharpness, or vibration or anything like that anymore. i just posted some street shots taken with a supposedly very average kit zoom lens. Could the images be sharper, sure with better camera and glass. I guess my thoughts are now about the lighting, composition, impact and visualizing the final image. Would some images be sharper with a different lens, i guess but people don't pixel peep. I shoot events and families and similar stuff, head shots. We all have favorite lenses and cameras but i control my aperture and shutter speed well enough to not have issues. i can hand hold my 70-200 2.8 turning off vr and shoot a play or musical from 50-75 ft and get a tack sharp shot and see the actors eyelashes and eye color. My point is that equipment is really good now, low noise cameras, really sharp zooms or at least sharp enough to see a pimple at 100 ft. Everything out now can produce a stellar image in the right hands. Just my humble opinion.

As I see the parade of post on UHH, most are about TECH, cameras, lenses or how they work or what we need?!
Does anybody have to know or even care how the duel pixel focusing system in their camera even works?
Who cares what the light meter is doing, the camera can do that all by itself!
Most of the pics shot on Manual are worse than the ones shot on Auto, at least that’s what many come on here saying.
I’ve said here many times that composition is KING! So if we compose well, why do we need to know any technical BS at all?!?! Gone are the days of full manual cameras with no meters and flying by the seat of your pants.
The cameras are way smarter than we are anyway.
With only a few exceptions, do we need to know any tech at all??? Do we?
Do you, other than to sound impressive???
I say no, what do you say?!
Feel free to post some pics to show your position. How you feel knowledge of tech helped your image!
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