Believe it or not! Photography is a relatively inexpensive hobby. You can purchase the best DSLR and lenses for under $10,000. After that, you can shoot everything without additional cost. I say that because other hobbies are much more expensive. Car collecting, boating, aviation, art collecting, travel, skiing and golf will cost more over time. If your budget allows, you can purchase photography equipment any time you feel like it.

The song says "if you can't please everyone then you have to please yourself.". Also, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Also, to each his own. Ok I'm done with the fortune cookie sayings. Most of us here take photos to record our travels and events and to please ourselves with what we shoot. If you don't like what I shoot, that's Ok too. If I am please with the output, that's what counts.

Anyone who tells you that they're software is the best is just blowing smoke. There are many PP programs that will do most of the PP that you need. Being an industry standard only means that it was there first and adopted by professionals. It does not mean that it is the best or the easiest or the most powerful. The more you use software and become knowledgeable with it's features, the more things you can do with it. That said, familiarity with software makes it difficult to switch to something else; even if it is better at doing what you need to do.

According to Theoria Apophasis on you tube, the sensors for the D850 are made by an Israeli company named Tower Jazz. Panasonic owns 49% of Tower Jazz. Tower Jazz makes the sensors in three plants in Japan.

Back in the day, what separated Pros from amateurs was the number of pictures they could take at a shoot. Most amateurs could not afford to develop a lot of exposures at one time and would only submit 3 or 4 rolls of 36 exposure film for development. Pros would go through a lot of film, develop it themselves and find the keepers to print. With digital and PP, there is no limit to the number of shots you can take and how you process them is also unlimited. As far as I am concerned film is dead. Just ask Kodak.

Photography is a subjective art. It matters less what equipment was used to capture the image than the observer's reaction to the image. That is why photos taken by Matthew Brady 150 years ago with primitive equipment still have emotional power. That is why impressionist artists like Renoir or Picasso still are shown in Museums and evoke reactions. Modern cameras can record reality well but only a skilled photographer can produce a truly emotional reaction in observers.

Hopefully, Murphy's Camera does not follow Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.

I have the Dell Insperon 13 with the I7 chip 8 G of memory and a 256 G SSD. I really like this 2 in 1. My only problem with it is battery life between charges. I like that it has 3 USB 3 ports (only one will charge external devices) and a SD card reader. It fits in my camera bag and only weighs 3.3 lbs. When away from home, I use an external 256 G jump drive to download my raw files so I don't fill up the SSD with photos. All my PP programs work well. One of the things my version has that I really like is the built-in stylus so my screen remains clean. For some reason Dell discontinued the stylus on later Insperon 13s.

Do you reuse your SD cards? As a practice, I never reuse my SD cards. I label them and store them after I download my data to my Hard Drive. If my computer dies or my HD crashes or I make a mistake in PP, I can always retrieve the original raw files from the SD card. SD cards are relatively cheap and so I just keep putting new ones in my camera for a shoot. As for SD memory capacity, I try to use a 16G or 32G card so that if the card fails ( I've never had that happen), I would not lose too many photos. I guess if I were doing video, I would need larger capacity SD cards.

I agree, it would be better to use a camera and has better dynamic range and produces less noise at high ISO values. But as I said, what really matters is the final image. The final image depends on the camera, quality of the lens, lighting, composition and Post Processing. Which component has more effect in producing good photo is not always clear.

Dynamic Range and ISO range limitations of some cameras can be mitigated in PP. As with all aspects of photography, be most important part is the final output, be it a print or a digital image.

I generally use "save as" to ensure that is goes where I want it to go. Also, if you are working in PS, save it as a psd file. That ensures that all layers are saved. Once you are satisfied with the PP, then you can save it as a jpg or tiff.

If you are getting paid for your photography, use the best equipment. If you are a hobbyist photographer, the best may not be that important. The Pros are looking at durability as well as performance in their equipment. The Pros use their equipment more often and in all kinds of conditions that hobbyists do not. A hobbyist camera may not be weatherproof and may only be rated for 100,000 shutter actuations. I know that if the weather is bad or cold or rainy, I will stay inside and drink some of my single malt Scotch instead of Photographing outdoors. A Pro must face the elements and shoot to earn enough to buy the single malt Scotch.

I use an Epson Perfection 2400 PHOTO flat bed scanner. It has two scan heads, one in the flat bed and one in the cover. The scan head in the cover is used for scanning 35mm negatives or slides. The holder takes 6 exposures of negatives or 4 slides at a time. The negatives when scanned into the computer are changed to positives by most PP programs. The flat bet scan head will scan in your prints.

This came up a few weeks ago. As far as I am concerned, there are no starter cameras, only starter photographers. The cheapest DSLR is capable of taking wonderful photos. Composition, lighting and lens quality make more of a difference in the clarity and quality of the photos than what DSLR camera was used. Where the camera abilities do come into play are for sports, wildlife and low light photography. If you do not plan to shoot any of these, then save your money on the camera and spend it on better lenses.