I am trying to decide between two lens and wonder if anyone has experience with both. I have an Olympus OM 5 M II. I do most of my shooting with a 17 - 100 Olympus Pro lens and need more reach on occasion. I am trying to decide between the Olympus 75-300 and the Panasonic 100-300. Unlike my pro lens the Panasonic which has in lens stabilization will not sink with my camera stabilization to the best of my knowledge. The Oly lens has no in lens stabilization so not an issue there. The Panasonic lens has dust and splash proof construction which my camera has as well and the Oly does not. The Panasonic lens is also a little faster.

I am trying to decide between two lens and wonder if anyone has experience with both. I have an Olympus OM 5 M II. I do most of my shooting with a 17 - 100 Olympus Pro lens and need more reach on occasion. I am trying to decide between the Olympus 75-300 and the Panasonic 100-300. Unlike my pro lens the Panasonic which has in lens stabilization will not sink with my camera stabilization to the best of my knowledge. The Oly lens has no in lens stabilization so not an issue there. The Panasonic lens has dust and splash proof construction which my camera has as well and the Oly does not. The Panasonic lens is also a little faster.

I am a new artist with a dozen paintings I wish to photograph and then sell copies and/or gyclees of them online. I'm not sure what's out there, or which direction to go. Some paintings are watercolor, some acrylic, and some pastel (all flat). They range in size from 6" x 10", upwards to 36" x 72". Some of the smaller ones I might have scanned. I'm not sure if scanning the large ones would be more cost effective in the long run than taking my own photos. With my own photos, at least I have the option of some minor editing in photoshop. The mid size paintings average 16" x 20" to 28" x 40". I want to offer enlargements up to 36" x 60" without distortion. I may print some on metal or glass as well.
I saw a Sony Alpha SLT-a99ii on Amazon for sale for $500. I thought the 42 mp's might do a better job although the files would be very large, but I questioned the price as all the other 42mp's sell for 5x's more. His offer on Amazon has since been taken down (he claimed his contract ran out), and to order one has to contact him instead of Amazon. Sounded a little shady to me. The other camera that sounded good is a Nikon D850, but it's also out of my price range.
Nonetheless, any advice on what camera to buy, and what lens is appropriate for what I need to do for under $1,000, is welcome. Thanks, NL

There has been a long discussion on why to go with the Adobe LR/PS subscription plan or why not to.

I'd like to offer a different view on this matter... on why I really don't like the Adobe subscription and why I do not recommend to anyone to follow this path.

No, it is not for the money... $10/month for the LR/PS subsciption, or $69 por ON1, or $50 for Affinity are always pennies next to the cost of photographic gear or the cost of the time we invest in this hobby or profession.

It is because the real reason because Adobe choose to *force* their customers to go to a subscription plan. The subscription is NOT an option (as for Capture One), but is MUST.

Adobe was facing a very severe competition, not only from other players, but specially from themselves. Photoshop has become such an amazing and extremely powerful piece of software that there is no real need to purchase an upgrade each year, at least for the majority of it's users.

If someone invested $700 in Photoshop, he or she would think twice (or trice) before throwing $300 for an upgrade. And this was the key problem: when a piece of software gets so enormous like Photoshop (or MS Word, or Autocad), it is increasingly difficult and expensive to add more features and improvements *that can be sold for a high price*. The problem is: how do you improve something that is already perceived as almost perfect?

Would you really pay $300 for some bugfixes and some new features you do not readily use?

The other problem is that Photoshop started in 1987... yes it is that old. Many of it concepts are hardcoded in the oldest lines of code, and the original programmers have left Adobe long since. I've already faced this problem in my line of work: you have a some huge program, and you reach a point where you have to start from scratch, because it is so complex that touching somethings makes fall the rest apart like a house of cards. And if the original developers are gone, you are dead in the water. You only option is to fix, fix, add, fix, add, wrap, fix, add ... it gets harder and harder. There is a theoretical curve for that... just google it.The cost goes up, the improvements go down.

Adobe has already a more modern product which is not nearly as powerful as Photoshop: Lightroom. Other players have chosen the newer path of adding non destructive photo retouch features to the RAW developing workflow (Capture One, ON1, DXO labs, etc.), but if Adobe went that path, it would necessary stop selling Photoshop. Why pay $700 for PS if LR already had 90% of the features an average photografer would need. THEY HAD TO THROTTLE the addition of new additions to LR, like masks, layers, and so on.

So they decided to go the subscription plan... now all the risk is on the customer!! The customer purchases the subscription and forgets about it (... its just 10 bucks a month ...) and Adobe is free to push the updates THEY want. They no longer need to convince the public to buy an expensive upgrade. And if you choose to cancel the subscription, you lose the ability to re-edit all your past photos, it's almost blackmail.

If you look at Adobe's changelog, most of the upgrades are rather minor (new camera compatibility, bugfixes, some menu regrouping some minor new features). Honestly, would you pay $300 a year for them?

The real reason behind the seemingly low price of the subscription is not they they are nice and cute people... it is simply because in a free market, *the price is set by the market itself *and it happens that LR+PS is not more worth than those $10 per month. This is the ugly truth. Capture One charges $20 per month for the OPTIONAL subscription... just because they can. Adobe cannot.

The other software vendors are forced to make great leaps between versions, or else their customers will not pay the upgrade fee. And it shows: look at the differences between ON1 2018 and 2019, or Capture One 11 and 12.

The same happened to MS Office: I have the subscription plan (it makes sense to my business... $99/year for 5 PCs), since 2017... and I really don't find any significant improvements (besides new fancy icons) between the 2017 and the 2019 software. It's just incremental.

This is the reason because I don't like subscription plans: because it is the last resource of a company to reduce their development costs at the expense of innovation. That is exactly was Adobe did.

I just don't want to play their game.

I wonder if anyone here is having the same difficulty I’m having with my Sony A7RIII. I’ve had my camera for just about a year now, and in the last six months I’ve been struggling with auto focus during portrait shoots, whether in the studio or outdoors. While eye auto focus is awesome when it works, typically after 100 shots or so, it, along with the flexible spot auto focus, fails, and just seems to hunt without the ability to lock onto focus. The camera has been serviced by Precision Camera twice, but the problem persists. Also, Precision Camera found a problem with my 85MM 1.4 GM lens, and replaced the mount, but the issue remains. I’m approaching the end of my warrantee period, so I’m hoping to get this resolved soon, If anyone else is experiencing this same issue, it would be great to hear from you. I’m sure there is a high probability the issue is being caused by operator error, but at this point I’ve tried everything I could think of. Thanks in advance for your help, you guys and ladies always come through!

There has been a long discussion on why to go with the Adobe LR/PS subscription plan or why not to.

I'd like to offer a different view on this matter... on why I really don't like the Adobe subscription and why I do not recommend to anyone to follow this path.

No, it is not for the money... $10/month for the LR/PS subsciption, or $69 por ON1, or $50 for Affinity are always pennies next to the cost of photographic gear or the cost of the time we invest in this hobby or profession.

It is because the real reason because Adobe choose to *force* their customers to go to a subscription plan. The subscription is NOT an option (as for Capture One), but is MUST.

Adobe was facing a very severe competition, not only from other players, but specially from themselves. Photoshop has become such an amazing and extremely powerful piece of software that there is no real need to purchase an upgrade each year, at least for the majority of it's users.

If someone invested $700 in Photoshop, he or she would think twice (or trice) before throwing $300 for an upgrade. And this was the key problem: when a piece of software gets so enormous like Photoshop (or MS Word, or Autocad), it is increasingly difficult and expensive to add more features and improvements *that can be sold for a high price*. The problem is: how do you improve something that is already perceived as almost perfect?

Would you really pay $300 for some bugfixes and some new features you do not readily use?

The other problem is that Photoshop started in 1987... yes it is that old. Many of it concepts are hardcoded in the oldest lines of code, and the original programmers have left Adobe long since. I've already faced this problem in my line of work: you have a some huge program, and you reach a point where you have to start from scratch, because it is so complex that touching somethings makes fall the rest apart like a house of cards. And if the original developers are gone, you are dead in the water. You only option is to fix, fix, add, fix, add, wrap, fix, add ... it gets harder and harder. There is a theoretical curve for that... just google it.The cost goes up, the improvements go down.

Adobe has already a more modern product which is not nearly as powerful as Photoshop: Lightroom. Other players have chosen the newer path of adding non destructive photo retouch features to the RAW developing workflow (Capture One, ON1, DXO labs, etc.), but if Adobe went that path, it would necessary stop selling Photoshop. Why pay $700 for PS if LR already had 90% of the features an average photografer would need. THEY HAD TO THROTTLE the addition of new additions to LR, like masks, layers, and so on.

So they decided to go the subscription plan... now all the risk is on the customer!! The customer purchases the subscription and forgets about it (... its just 10 bucks a month ...) and Adobe is free to push the updates THEY want. They no longer need to convince the public to buy an expensive upgrade. And if you choose to cancel the subscription, you lose the ability to re-edit all your past photos, it's almost blackmail.

If you look at Adobe's changelog, most of the upgrades are rather minor (new camera compatibility, bugfixes, some menu regrouping some minor new features). Honestly, would you pay $300 a year for them?

The real reason behind the seemingly low price of the subscription is not they they are nice and cute people... it is simply because in a free market, *the price is set by the market itself *and it happens that LR+PS is not more worth than those $10 per month. This is the ugly truth. Capture One charges $20 per month for the OPTIONAL subscription... just because they can. Adobe cannot.

The other software vendors are forced to make great leaps between versions, or else their customers will not pay the upgrade fee. And it shows: look at the differences between ON1 2018 and 2019, or Capture One 11 and 12.

The same happened to MS Office: I have the subscription plan (it makes sense to my business... $99/year for 5 PCs), since 2017... and I really don't find any significant improvements (besides new fancy icons) between the 2017 and the 2019 software. It's just incremental.

This is the reason because I don't like subscription plans: because it is the last resource of a company to reduce their development costs at the expense of innovation. That is exactly was Adobe did.

I just don't want to play their game.

Ok, granted! I have only had my D7200 since January and I still have a great deal to learn. Often, I think of the various settings that I should have used after returning home. Most recent was our Easter trip to the beach. Thinking later, I needed to spend more prep time with settings as beach photography in mid-day with cloudless skies is a challenge.

So, eager to share, as my wife wants pictures for her facebook, I sent her my link to Google photos. I tried to explain that some of the photos have not yet been "processed" but to no avail, "how come your pictures are so light?" "You have this "expensive" camera!" (One I bought for surviving 80 years of life, not marriage but working on year 26!). "And, why do Samsung; iPhone and Google Plex photos look so much better?"

I must admit! There is truth to that statement. Discouraging! I am feeling like an artist that does want to show his or her work to anyone! Yes, photography is an art! I need to tame my enthusiasm a bit before sharing any of my photos. Does that sound defensive? Yes, it is!

No, I'm not ready to visit eBay and list my camera. I need to keep working on stuff!

Someday I will have the courage to upload something to this website.

First, let me say that I am not looking for a compact. I have a small Sony a6000 and a smaller Sony WX9, as well as a very old Canon SD800 Elph. Every day we get requests for recommendations for compacts or travel cameras. Yesterday, I thought I'd do a search and see what I could find. Not much.

If I were seriously looking, I would have spent more time, but nothing obvious jumped out at me. I had expected that I'd have a choice of several excellent cameras with three features. I was looking for three things: compact, viewfinder, wide zoom range. And I was searching in the $500 range, so that nice $5,000 Leica was out. Canon, Panasonic, and Sony were frequently recommended in online articles, but most had significant shortcomings, especially the missing viewfinder. Reading the one-star reviews of the Panasonic Lumix on Amazon was an eye-opener. Reliability was awful, and service matched it.

It's hard to believe that with all the progress being made with cameras, they can't produce a good, reliable, durable camera with those three features I mentioned above. My Sonys might be old, but they still work, and they're paid for.

https://www.lifewire.com/best-viewfinder-cameras-493677
http://www.compactcamerawithviewfinder.com/
http://www.imaging-resource.com/compact-cameras-with-viewfinders

Ravi that is quite a thorough review of the Panasonic Lumix G9 vs Olympus Mkll. Most of it was over my head. I'm not a tech giant. But it was impressive in its scope. It would be hard to go wrong with either camera. At this point both are out of my price range and skill level.
I'm having enough challenge reading the book suggested by another UHHer -
"Mastering the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Markll" by Darrell Young- which is what I will probably buy.
I appreciate you referring me to the link. Thank you