I have a Pixel 3a and I think the camera is exceptional. I also have a mate who has one and he agrees (and this guy has had more phones than you or I have had hot dinners!)

Maybe you got a dud?

+1 for this solution. In my experience (I've worked in IT all my life) OS problems outweigh hardware problems 10 to 1. And it's an easy test; replace the main drive with an old one you can overwrite, install Windows and see if the problem is still there.

For a number of years I have used a QNAP box holding four drives in a RAID5 configuration. That means I can lose one drive without losing data. And that's happened...four times. I've replaced all four drives, and while that one failed drive has been out of action I've been exposed to data loss. Fortunately a second drive failure hasn't occurred. So I tend to use this box for storing non critical data where capacity is more important than reliability. But even for that it doesn't do a very good job because it is sooooo slooooow. For backup of critical stuff I use Macrium Reflect to mirror my main drive to an external drive that connects via a caddy (making it easy to use multiple drives). I alternate between two of these external drives. For data like photos I use FreeFileSync to backup to the same drive. The first backup was a full and took a long time. Subsequent backups are fast because they are differential or incremental (can't remember which). Both Macrium Reflect and FreeFileSync are free. I do the backups monthly and they take about 45 minutes all up. The big attraction of having your backups offline is that you're protected from Cryptolocker type threats whereas the RAID solution isn't.

Hahaha!

My experience. I bought a s/h D850. It came with a 'Nikon' battery. It had issues with battery life. It was still under warranty so I sent it to Nikon Service. After a month they returned it saying they 'suspected' the battery wasn't an original Nikon. They couldn't actually tell whether it was genuine or not. I enquired of the previous owner and he said he may have purchased it on eBay.

So if you decide to buy Nikon, buy from a real, long established business. If you buy on eBay or similar then buy a 'known' knock-off like Wasabi or Neewer.

I posted something about this earlier but unfortunately it flew under the radar. When using a lens with a long focal length (say 600mm) on a tripod (let's say a cheap one) there will be movement. This can clearly be observed when using live view if focused on something at considerable distance (say the moon). My observation is that turning on VR/OIS improves this (as it should as it's not dissimilar to hand holding).

Why wouldn't you turn on stabilisation?

WRT the use of OIS when using a tripod, I recently took some moon shots using a 150-600mm @600mm. It was a still night and I was using a sturdy Manfrotto tripod yet when viewing the subject through Live View @ 100% zoom I could still see significant movement. I then turned on OIS and the movement was diminished.

That suggests to me that in some circumstances at least the use of OIS while using a tripod is beneficial.

Agree?

While I understand what you're saying someone might comment that a Leonardo da Vinci painting is nothing more than a bit of canvas with some paint slapped on it :-). But I agree with you, I find it hard to see $700 in one of these but there will always be suppliers happy to service the "more money than sense" crowd and I see nothing wrong with that. I like to buy second hand from these people because the products are generally very well made. If you buy in that middle range then it's a bit more of a roll of the dice.

Good question. Now that I compare them side by side the only difference that I can see is that you have a horizontal adjustment of the vertical post which you may never use.

That one is now $94 (cheapest I could find on eBay) which is good value but for an extra $26 you can get this one which looks a bit slicker and has more adjustments.

I think they're both good choices.

OK so what he's saying is that with the 150-600 he now shoots at 1/500th so doesn't need to use a tripod at all. I can relate to that as I have the same lens and always shoot hand held, often at 1/640th. You can get some sharp shots at this speed.

Coincidentally I was just looking at that exact model on eBay now. It looks very impressive for the price!

That's what I thought. My question was in relation to this comment:

"Gene51 did not say *slower shutter speed." He said "shorter," meaning faster."

So we have slower/faster and shorter in the same sentence. One is shutter speed and the other is focal length. The original comment was that he's stopped using the gimbal since buying a 159 - 600 since he was shooting "shorter at 1/500". That's the part I was seeking clarification for...

Thank you! That's the kind of response I was looking for. I've bought Neewer stuff before (grips, batteries and chargers) and it's all good value and well made.

Then what is the 1/500? 1/500 of what?