At one point, my parents fretted that they were spending money that I would otherwise inherit. I had to reassure them first of all that it was their money.

I also had to remind them that you don't want anyone happy at your funeral.

The full frame cameras will have slightly better noise, slightly better dynamic range, and slightly more control over thin depths of field. The only question is how much you are willing to give up to get those slight improvements.

Let say that the improvement in noise was 10% (over ISO 800 only). Let's say that the total additional cost (camera and lenses) was $2000, and the total additional weight was two pounds (in your camera bag at all times.)

Is it worth two grand and heavy backpack?

From an earlier conversation:

Machine learning is when your "maps" program monitors the various roadways, and tells you which will be the best based on past trials.

Artificial intelligence is when your maps program figures out that you are a particularly bad driver, and advises you to take the train instead.

So a really good artificial intelligence program would scan other pictures of the same subject, and use those pictures to fix the mistakes that I made...

In my opinion, you are correct to go for sharpness first and worry about noise second. If you have a big group and you need to shoot at F7 to get everyone in focus, you will find that the noise usually "looks" better on a final product than blurry faces.

There are still two things that you can do to help, though.

1. Add Light.
If you are shooting a group, take the time to go ahead and set up a big flash and a cheap umbrella. If you don't have an umbrella then you can aim your flash at the ceiling. If you don't have a big enough flash, then just set up a bunch of light bulbs. (Be careful using different color bulbs, or you will end up with oddly colored shadows.)

2. Shoot slower.
A lot of cameras these days have pretty good image stabilization, if you have steady hands you will find that you can shoot as low as 1/80 without a tripod. If you use a tripod and turn the IS off, you can usually shoot group photos as low as 1/40 assuming everyone knows how to sit still. (If there are kids, all bets are off.)

When Rubber starts to degrade, it cannot be repaired, it can only be replaced. Rubbing alcohol can remove the old surface stickiness, but you might want to try Windex first, since alcohol can damage certain types of plastic rubber.

You can also try baking soda paste, and the commercial product goo-be-gone. These have the same problem: they are just removing the degraded rubber. If it is all degraded, then it will all come off.

There are plasticized paints that you can use to paint over the rubberized grips, but you have to be careful with those for several reasons. First, they will require a primer, since hardly anything will stick to that rubber even after you cleaned it. The primers that work best are the "outdoor" kind. Second, once the paint goes on, it cannot be removed without also removing the original rubber.

Will the software allow me to put my head on Rocky Balboa's body?

Abe's used to be a good dealer. I don't know if they changed hands, but the reviews these days are not as good.

Having said that, I have bought grey market cameras from Ebay with good results. It is about the same risk as buying a used camera, except you know up front that there is no warranty. Don't trust any vendor that only has 10 or 20 good reviews. You don't want any vendor that has only been in the camera business for a few weeks.

It used to be "F8 and be there", but autofocus is a lot better than it used to be.

L7, of course, was the band in "Pretend We're Dead"

"F7 and be there."

The weak link in most cases is the battery. Even the FZ100 battery (in the A7Riii) will go dead if the temperature is cold enough. At -10F, the battery should last about 20 minutes or so

The key is effective battery management. Keep a spare battery in a pocket close to your body to warm up, and switch them when the camera battery goes down. As it warms up, the battery will regain its charge, so you can just keep switching them.

When you get back indoors, leave the camera in the bag while it warms up. The weatherproofing is about average, but even if it were amazing, you still don't want condensation dripping all over the exposed parts of your camera.

Corollaries:

- If you display more than one image of the same subject, put the images in the same frame.

- Read up on the best setting to use in a given situation, but arrive early enough to test the settings and look at the results.

First questions is whether you installed the new firmware. (The real-time tracking wasn't added until July.)

If you are using an AF point, you should be able to place the point over the subject and half-press the shutter. At that point, the camera will not only start tracking the AF subject, but will track eye distance if available. So if the eye pops into frame and back out, it will switch eye-af on and off.

My A9 has a lot of trouble with this in low light, and in situations where I am using zone AF (once it acquires a subject, it sticks with it, but you never know what it is going to acquire).

In my experience, the Sony a6000 is (roughly) the best camera under $500 for portraits. It has a pretty fast autofocus, and you can set the back-button for eye-autofocus. The Sony 50mm F1.8 OSS lens is great for portraits, and fairly inexpensive, but the two of them together will run over $500.

If you buy the a6000 with the kit lens, it will be under $500, but the kit lens is at F5.6 when it is at 50mm, and it does not have the same level of sharpness or color as the portrait lens.

If you want the total price under $500, then you might want to look at used cameras. All of them are good, these days, but you might want to start with the Panasonic LX100 or LX100m2. The 4/3 sensor is surprisingly good, the 24-75 lens (built in) ranges from F2.8 at the long end to F1.7 at the wide end, and has better character than almost any kit lens. The only weakness of the camera, in my opinion, is backlit situations, (and even then, if you have the time to fiddle with the focus, color, and starburst, you can produce some excellent portraits).

I usually shoot with a Sony A6000. For me, this offers a good compromise.
- Smaller than average,
- Cheaper than average,
- Better low-light quality than average
- (Slightly) faster focusing than average

Having said that, though, you can't go wrong by buying almost any of the cameras made by the major brands in the last few years. The Canon and Nikon versions of the same camera both offer slightly better colors, and a better choice of lens upgrades, and only a slightly bigger camera body.

Olympus and Panasonic offer slightly smaller total camera (and lens) size, slightly smaller weight, slightly better weatherproofing, but slightly more noise in low light.

In good light, with a stationary subject, and a large depth of field, most people will not be able to tell the difference between a full frame camera and a cell phone.

Much less APSC.