Ah yes! Old friends! I had a Speed Graphic bought at Willoughby's in the early '50's and then a Beseler Topcon SLR in 1958. Loved those old beasts and got a pretty penny for both on Ebay but the momory of the "kachunk" of the focal plane shutter in the Graphic and the solid sound of the mirror flip and shutter release of the Topcon will be with me always and a nostagic reminder of my youth.

Are there actually "L" lenses for Canon R series? Or just L equivalent.

I am NOT about to wade through 20+ more pages of replies to this philosophical question but thankj you anyway for burning a hole in another hour of my time.

My father was an advanced amateur photographer for his time (early '30s to about late '40s) with a Graflex 3 1/4x4 1/4 RB. As a child I recall many times being in his fully equipped darkroom with the three different Eastman Kodak safety filters for his light — panchromatic film, one for developing prints and I believe one for Orthochromatic film.

The Graflex had a revolving back since the camera couldn't be turned 90°. In effect, it was a big SLR. After he passed I opted to buy a Speed Graphic around 1950-51 but foolishly chose the same smaller format because I thought it would be nice to use his cut film holders and the film pack holder. Later I regretted that as more modern accessories, e.g. roll film adapters, were plentiful for the 4x5 size but not so for the 3 1/4X 4 1/4.

In any event, I am left with hundreds of negs from those years that I have been photographing with my digital camera using a crude light box made from an artist's tracing light pad powered from my PC using the USB port. The pad, unfortunately, consists of multiple leds so I had to jerry-rig a diffuser set up. It works fine as I use GIMP to convert the neg to a positive image (have not tried to print any yet). This is a sample: my father started a Chev.-Oldsmobile dealership in 1930 and this was his used car lot with 2 salemen.

As a side note here: I was just about to take the plunge on a SanDisc SSD 1T from Costco and ran into tons of on-line reviews cautioning one about the many reports of problems with that particular drive dating back to about May '23. Some were much more recent than that causing me to be hesitant about the SanDisc 1T Extreme Go SSD. Can anyone update me on this

Thanks to all for your responses. Maybe I'm confusing "Microsoft Picture Manager" (which used to be available) with a true editing type program. Clearly, that feature is no longer part of 365. BTW, I wouldn't call 365 a Word Processor as it includes PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook....but that's not the point. Whatever used to come into play when I opened photos that allowed a modest amount of editing has changed. If what I was used to is part of Windows 10, and not Microsoft Office, then they have changed it and I don't think it's nearly as good as the old version. Among some features was "sharpening" which seems absent from this new version.

Various posts claim that Microsoft 365 no longer includes the old photo editing feature that had been available. But when I click on any JPG image that I have, there is some sort of program that opens up and allows for adjusting of the usual parameters (contrast, color saturation, "auto adjustment", etc.). So what am I looking at?

I'll be 91 in January. Not looking forward to sucking next year. Wish me luck!

(Did I just hear a rim shot?)

As a disinterested Canon owner, I will say you have a way to stip the pot. 😎

Funny, my shrink has been telling me that the voices I hear in my head are not real. Now I know why I own a Canon.

Sheeeesh! I just spent the better part of a week researching hammers, making A-B comparisons, learning the composition of the metals used in each and now I learn it doesn't matter?

My old Beseler Topcon (1958) had a 58mm lens. I think that somewhat longer focal length was imposed in that early SLR world because of the need to clear the mirroays what so eor when ti flipped. Later, I had a Konica FS with a 40mm as "normal". But my understanding was always that the accepted convention was that normal was the diagonal measurement of the format being discussed.

How come no one stirred the pot by asking about Cell phone cameras vis a vis traditional cameras? That ought to extend this thread by a few hundred pages.

I've been a little out of this stuff for a while, but do the "R" cameras have the equivalent of "L" lenses in their armory?

(Have you looked on the other side?)