One thing I do is shut off the LCD previews. I used to have it give me a preview for 4 seconds, and sometimes 8. I never do anything with these previews, so why even do it. So i don't now, and battery life is easily 500 or more. This on a Canon though.
Funny, and timely. Three of us were talking about pictures taken on vacations lately, and one guy was complaining that he couldn't do anything with the pictures he took on his ipad. Seems he took pictures with a Nikon, don't know which model, but a DSLR, and they wouldn't open or he couldn't open to many on his Ipad. Hmmm, so he said from now on he will take pictures with his Ipad or Iphone, versus the DSLR. To each their own.
I have the Western Digital passport drives (2). Both are 500 mb, mostly because that is the size they came in several years ago. I would go with the 2TB of course. At $99, it doesn't make sense to go with the 1TB at $69. The passport drives are pretty portable too.
As a former engineer in a paper manufacturing plant, paper towels will contain microscopic bits of dirt. Think about where paper comes from, trees of course, which are cut down, dragged in the dirt, stored on dirt, come in contact with dirty conveyors, are mostly debarked, but not completely, kind of like a potato, still has some bark left. It is processed in digesters which does nothing to get rid of the dirt. The fibers are washed on screens, but the dirt in this first phase stays on the paper fiber. The fiber is then sent through what are called centricleaners which remove about 95% of the dirt particles, but cannot get the very tiny ones, which by the way are not really harmful. So, then the pulp is washed again, bleached, and formed into paper, leaving this tiny amount of dirt. And then you use it to clean your $1000++ camera and lenses? Not me, not ever. Don't even use paper towels, napkins, or facial tissue to clean your glasses as it can scratch them as well.
Always use lens wipes, or any what's called non-woven material, made not from wood paper, but polypropylene fibers, which are far cleaner.
As for alcohol or soap, nope, not them either. Not sure what alcohol will do, and I know soap leaves film. Plain distilled water on a non-woven cloth, slightly damp, will probably be the way I would go. I have never cleaned the outside of my camera, it simply doesn't seem to get dirty. I use the lens wipes for the glass, but never the rear element, only the front clear lens filter. I don't use the lenses without the lens filters.
Personally, I don't want another device like the card readers, so I go with SD cards of higher capacity. I have dual card capability, CF and SD, so I usually use one to shoot RAW, the other JPEG. For the RAW, I go with the 256 gb card, which you can get for $90, and for the CF, I have a couple of 64 gb extreme pros.
No, they have not pulled it. It is simply too early. Canon says they will start shipping in June, 2015. I would check back in April. Maybe then you can preorder.
Somewhere on line is picture taken with a gigapixel scientific camera. I can't find it anymore. But in that picture you can zoom in so far that I there was a man walking on the street at least a mile away, and you could see the smoke coming off his cigarette.
Practical, no, fun, yes. I will definitely look into the new Canon. I have the 5d III now, which is great, but some times I do want to zoom in and even even more but can't. I like taking pictures of grand kids running in the back yard, or other moving objects, but don't want to change lenses. I tend to use low f lenses so I can shoot at faster shutter speeds.
As for the ISO limit of 6400, not a factor for me, I have found 6400 is too high, too grainy. I never go above 800.
60 mb per picture in Raw/Large. Thats about the same as Nikon 810. At that rate, better get a new hard drive. But they are cheap anyway. So are SD cards, under $100 for a 256gb one now. I bought one of these monster SD cards, works just fine with my MKIII.
Sorry, Canon website says $3,699 for S version.
By the way, the price I saw for the 5Ds is $3,999.
Sorry, you will not get the MKIII for $1000. In fact, the retail price for a MKII is $2,300, and the best used price is $1,100. You might see left over MKIIs drop some, and the MKIII's drop to $2,300, but I doubt any lower for a long time if ever.
That said, I have an MKII and an MKIII, both will likely go for sale if the new ones come out. I'll give it six months though for Canon to work out the bugs, and to get feedback on the new ones.
As some have said, just use it. The tutorials are good, particularly for things like layers, but like a lot of things, if you don't use the programs often you will quickly forget where things are in the program or what they are used for. I play with photos quite a bit, and still am amazed at the power of these programs, and how much there is to know. i have read quite a few books, did on line tutorials, but nothing beats using the programs often.
The Canon MX920 does a nice job with photos. It cost about $100. Pretty fast, and also wireless if that's an interest. I connect with USB.
I have had similar issues with Topaz, and have found the issues with the plug in being related to RAM memory. I have app FreeMemoryPro installed on my computer, and can watch my RAM usage. Often times if I have my browser open, and any photo software, my RAM memory gets pretty full. Secondly, a lot of time you will see that the RAM tied up even if you close some of the photos, so you have to use the app to clear the memory. After freeing the memory, Topaz opens right up. First thing to do is close your browser when working with photos. The browser is a
RAM hog, especially if you have several tabs open.