At first the fun and convenience of digital photography was that of emailing to a handful of family and friends but all too soon a serious question arose. "Calibrate your monitor,match it to your printer"..or maybe Costco or halfway across the country. Sounded familiar though, always something else to buy, to learn,to take up space,to turn into a dinosauer in five years. Finally when using UH search for this subject someone had said the magic words:
"You'll never know what a print should be unless you see the print in a gallery." Back to the future. Prints. Exhibits. I'd gone to some because of knowing whose works they were. Uh huh,recognized them. Umhmm, little magazine illustrations do not equal gallery prints. Hhmm,light,dark,poor quality,it could send a budding "Ansel Adams" to total despair couldn't it.
So obviously we will recognize omeone's picture for one or two reasons. It must in some way be a quite extraordinary image and/or has been shown,promoted,and used as an example so often that just about everyone recognizes it.
Free at last- why should it matter if my picture looks light,dark,flat or green on someone else's monitor adjusted for his/her convenience. If you go to a gallery you will not remember exactly how light/dark or yellow something seemed an hour later. It will be the impact the image had on you. So can anyone tell me exactly how light/dark that impactful "Mt. Suribachi" should be? Haven't you also seen 35mm camera "Half Domes" that looked quite familiar when potographed from the same spot as the original? In which galleries did you see either one?
Let nothing said here be interpreted to mean I have objections to patience or precision but perfection is simply unattainable and we can't even approach it unless seeing the print in a gallery.
You who thought calibration of your monitor was essential so you could sell your picture,(often only so you could "upgrade"by the way),have wasted both your time and mine. So now that I have escaped "calibrate-itis", I'd like you to consider what really matters and let me know what possible motivation or "ultimate reality" causes you to pick up a camera? What sort of image will make it worthwhile? This should require a bit of self-searching so please provide some well-considered sincere answer that isn't pedagogic..provided you are able to do so.

I was a little bored and going through cleaning up some stuff and came across a picture of the "ghost tree" at the Bandon Dunes golf resort I took with a Canon powershot. Like most of you, I also had a number of full moon images (Canon 60D), which by themselves are okay, but nothing to write home about. But with a little cropping, exposure tweaking and overlapping in PS Elements, I got something worth looking at.

Feel free to post anything you like here where you have taken a so-so image(s) and post-processed it (them) into a keeper.

As MT Shooter said, it probably adds very little to the cost of a DSLR to incorporate video. One camera, choice of functions. Just be glad they haven't stuck a phone in there (yet). "True" photographers may find themselves in situations where being able to switch to video mode will come in handy. Coming up on an accident scene, doing preliminary evaluations of a site for a later shoot to plan positions, who knows? Even a video of a model to study, see the best angle, background, etc. Thing is, the utility may come as an unexpected, but pleasant surprise, at very little cost.

I'm not leaving, I just will no longer be offering C&C to members of this forum. It has become obvious that members here do not think the C&C I offer is of use or even worth my time since in this thread it has been refered to as nasty, jealousy, and vemon filled. :( To say I'm not hurt by these comments would be a lie.

I noticed that Photo Guy has mentioned that he has been told that his pictures were "Crap" here on the UHH, I would love for him to post a link to this thread, it DOES NOT exist!

He is actually blowing smoke up members butts to gain sympathy and have people tell him that his pictures are great, this is his M.O. I think he is getting the UHH mixed up with another forum where he was asked to leave because he did attempted to do exactly the same thing but it backfired on him.

In the process of Photo Guy trying to gain postive feedback and ego stroking, members jumped on his bandwagon calling me names and ended up doing what Photo Guy was accusing me of doing in the first place. In this thread I have been bashed and called names.

Thank you UHH for the wonderful, truthful and heart felt post.