Changing to "Large" did to increase the font size on my monitor. as a writer said, on HiDpi monitors, it does not help. Mine is 5,000 pixels across, so that explains it, I think.

But... if I go to Apple, System Preferences, Displays, and then choose Display Settings in the left lower corner.... then I can choose the "Larger Text" choice. That enlarges LR and its words, so it fills the screen (and the words look a little larger).

(I usually keep mine midway between that choice and the "default". But try the "Larger Text. It helps a little).

My house fire in the Colorado goods was estimated to be 3,400 degrees. It was from a forest fire. My gun inside the fireproof safe fired. The box was destroyed and had exploded. I can’t tell if it was from the fire itself or the ammunition exploding ( before or after the box failed?) My neighbors’ large and fire resistant/expensive gun safe was “intact” from the outside…. But we could not open the lock . However we cut through the metal walls either shears. And all the papers inside where ash. We could not get the specs on what temp it was supposed to protect up to…. But it was thick and had lots of insulation in the walls. Just saying…. 1,700 degrees is the standard for fireproof boxes. That assumes the fire department gets the fire under control within one hour. At least, that is what I read after my fire. If you live in the city, that might be ok.

Getting a pair of glasses made for the distance you like between your comfortable sitting position and the screen is key. I used to read mammograms and had them made for 22-25 inches. That was my comfortable distance. Sit in front of the computer and have a spouse or friend measure the distance from your eye to the screen. Then go to the optometrist and have him or her put up the test pattern at that measured distance. Don’t just say you want “ computer glasses”. The distance the optometrist chooses might not be comfortable for you. In addition, some optometrist don’t even want to test you at that specific distance. They just want to take your book-reading prescription and use some multiplier to make your “computer prescription”. That is lazy and not good. PS. I don’t know if there is a time period you should wait between surgery and getting your prescription tested. In the old days there was….I think it was between one and three months.

Back in the “olden days”, others reported the same findings on older cameras that had VR. Some cameras used to decrease quality when the Shutter speed was faster than 1/500. I don’t remember which were those cameras. Maybe some Canon models? Don’t remember which.

[quote=Rab-Eye]For the second day in a row, I was doing some shooting with my Fuji XT-3 and 50–140 mm lens, using a tripod. This lens has a switch to turn the OIS on and off. I should have switched it off according to both conventional wisdom and the lens instructions. Well, I forgot to do that and the pictures are tack sharp anyway. I guess not turning it off could potentially cause problems, but evidently not all the time. Any thoughts?


Reply:
It depends on the shutter speed. I did tests using test patterns on my Nikon d5200, D750 and d850. 1/30 of a second is a magic number. Any shutter speed longer than that decreases the spatial resolution of the viewed test pattern if I do not turn off what Nikon calls Vibration Reduction, VR. Anything longer than 1/10 of a second degrades the quality of of anything or any scene I photograph.

On my Fuji Gfx100s, the magic numbers are similar if I do pixel peeping. But occasionally I can do a 1 second exposure of regular scenes and even stars and not see degradation, despite leaving IBIS turned on. I think it depends on the atmospheric conditions. But at 2.5 seconds, they are all horrible.

On the Nikons, anything faster than 1/1000 shutter speed degrades quality if I don’t turn VR off. I haven’t tested the Fuji enough to say about that in real life scenes.

Just my opinion or observations

I have mixed feelings about this. I lived in Kodiak Island where it rains a lot. I used hot shoe covers all the time. I bought Nikon because the “wheels” where horizontal in orientation, while the Canon models I looked at had them vertically oriented and I feared water might get in that way easier. After 3+ years my camera failed. Repair services said it was a short that originated from the hot shoe electronics. (I received a replacement camera since I had bought a 5 year extended warranty from Best Buy… they no longer offer such long ones.) So I assume a tiny amount of water was getting under the cover, could not drain out well as I carried the camera and that created the problem. Now I live in dry climates. But when it is raining hard, I take the cover off and dry the hot shoe with a towel.

I bought some cheap ND filters set from China. Paid $ 20-40 if I remember right. I was happy with them. Took them to Iceland to shoot the waterfalls and seascapes. Other photographers on the trip had ND filters that they paid $ 200 for each filter or up to $ 700 for the set. I realized mine had a horrible color cast compared to theirs AND were distorting the image.. giving it what I called “astigmatism“. I threw the set in the hotel trash can and shot the rest of the trip without filters (or used the ones from other photographers who lent me theirs when they were not using them). No sense ruining all my pics with that cheap set.

You are correct. But quality improved before mirrorless. My use of HDR decreased with the Nikon D750 and even less with the D850. Now I still take 2-step bracketed series but most of the time I just process the darker one. I find I “see” the colors in the image better as I brighten a dark image easier than then I process a normal exposure.

There are 2 good options to choose from: 1) the phone app PhotoPills has some good DOF tables and ways to display them on your phone. It will be in feet or meters so you will have to visually convert that to what you have in your camera’s viewfinder. In addition, it has an “Advance” choice that lets you change the “Circle of Confusion” to a smaller number so it will show you what would be in focus on a larger print instead of the “standard” 8x10” and at whatever “viewing distance” from the physical print you like to “pixel peep” a print. I use the smallest number possible. And 2) my Nikon D850 when using “Live View” AND set to “Manual Focus”, plus my Fuji cameras both let me do “Focus Peaking” where they show me the areas that are in focus in color ( I like “red” most of the time). You can change the “sensitivity” of what is shown in focus in the “menu”. I switch to “Manual focus” to check what is focused, then alter my aperture or choose another area to focus on so I can “focus stack” the images in post processing later. In the Fuji I always leave it on “Manual focus” because when I press the button for “back button focusing” it over tides “Manual focus” and it focuses on whatever is in the focus box on either the eye viewfinder or the view screen . This way I have the best of all options, I think.

Both my late 2014 MacBook Pro Laptop and Desktop have been working extremely slow in Lightroom Classic processing since the update to Catalina and then Big Sur (including the newest updates). I have lots of Ram and "fast" GPUs for when they were made. But both my computers are late-2014 models. It is very frustrating. Maybe I need to update my computers, but will do only when they get the new Apple chip in desktop models. (Friends that have the new Apple chip on their new laptops say LR and PS have sped up tremendously, and they are using Big Sur).

I agree with all you say. However, I did have a fire (The "Spring Creek" forest fires in Colorado in 2018) where temperatures got up to 3,400 degrees. My "fireproof" box disintegrated just like everything else. I'll post a picture of it (that is the remnant of a 44 magnum revolver that was in it). If you read the detail on fireproof boxes, they guarantee that paper will not burn in them if the temp rises as high as 1,700 degrees for 30 minutes. If it is longer, or higher, no luck. Their "reasoning" is that in the city, the fire department will get there and put out their fire in the amount of time it will not reach 1,700 for 30 minutes. My friend's "fireproof" gun safe also lost everything inside; it was all ash except part of the frames of his shotguns. Admittedly, his gun safe metal box was in one piece, and remained locked, but we could cut through the metal with a saber saw. Maybe you can find some better fireproof boxes and safes, but read their specs carefully. My recommendation: for fire, make a copy of your hard drive and store it offsite.

(Download)

In town, be ready to take pics of the art decorating their buildings, windows and doors. Go to town with a 24-70 mm lens. Look around figure how the light might be and return in the evening and morning to shoot what you scouted on the prior visit. Like someone said, the main museum and it's outdoor exhibit. If you camp, there is an RV park in town with lots of neat stuff. too.

I have a card reader that connects to my iPhone. Before the trip I empty my phones photo file. Every night I copy my photos from my card to my phone. That way I have the original card and the phone’s file as a back up. When I get home I now just unload all me photos directly from the phone into my home computer . PS 1) my phone has 256G of storage. 2) the images in the phone are recorded in Raw, just like in my card.

Same thing happened to me last week. Turned out I was using a new card which was a “type II”. Showed images on D850 camera but not on computer. I had inserted it into my computer’s SD Card reader which was only a “type I”. When I plugged the card into a new external “type II” reader, it read images fine.

I know what you mean. A friend sent me a pic of Antelope Canyon, taken with his phone. It looked drab. I processed and printed it for him as a 20x30. Looked great above his fireplace.
I went there this Spring. My D750 and D850 pics looked drab too. Same thing at the Grand Canyon. After processing, they looked “great!”.
But now I am depressed. All the pics I see on the internet I know are not because there are great photographers.....just post processing that makes everything un-real! They are not as interesting now that I know this.