While you're by My. Rushmore look up Spearfish canyon and Needles highway.

Since it was under warranty the recalibration was covered, just had to pay shipping.

They did request basic camera info.

Check with Tamron. I have had two brand new ones (different final length) that I have had to send in to be recalibrated. Sharp after the recalibration.

Search eBay for your item as you normally would, and after the results come up scroll down on the left side through the filters. One of the options is"Sold Listings". Gives a good idea of the rangers that the product is actually going for. :)

You look tasty.

If you are concerned with redundancy in protecting you photos, but still want decent speed look into Drobo 5N. Not cheap, but excellent redundancy (can handle single or dual drive failure) and has some solid state storage to speed up access.

It's called the 1880 Town. Fun place to visit.
1880 Town (MST)
24280 SD Hwy 63 I90 Exit 170, Midland, SD 57552
(605) 645-1844
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KcvtNFoFkqyJ3JdNA

Even mirrorless! What a deal.

One thing to keep in mind with time lapse, if your lens has a vibration reduction feature, turn it off. With it on your images will shift slightly that will make your video have little jumps.

For length there are calculators out there, but general guidelines if you want smooth video is to figure 30 frames per second. So if you want a 5 minute video it would be 30 x 60 (seconds) x 5 (minutes) = 18,000 images. If you want this to be over 4 hours then 18,000 / 3,600 (seconds in an hour) = 5 seconds between pics.

I've played with the extension tubes on my 50mm 1.8G. My original thinking was the same that I wanted the additional light from the 1.8. The problem that I didn't take into account is that the depth of field with a 1.8 is already shallow. When I added the extension tubes my dof got so small that it was extremely difficult to get exactly what I wanted in focus. Next time I try it out I'll probably go closer to a f4 - f8.

Question for mirrorless users then... Do you feel you spend less time in post?

Recently played with a Canon EOS R. Pretty nice camera. I did find one thing that it did that I really didn't like was that it overcompensated the white balance especially in the viewfinder. Looking at a red brick wall with a few off white posters on it the screen looked pretty accurate. However, the viewfinder turned the off white poster a true white. There could be a compensation setting that could be adjusted, but I didn't like how it decided what was white.
I have a friend that has a sony mirrorless and he'll admit that his camera is causing him to become a little lazy in his photography in trusting his camera too much. He feels like rather than thinking about what he can do with a photo he's basically treating it like a point-n-shoot. "The camera knows what it's doing." I think this can be good because it allows you to focus on the subject of your photos, but personally I feel as though I'd have a disconnect from creativity from the camera standpoint.

From what I can gather you are wanting to measure to different types of light sources. One your camera can do and the other it can't. Your camera's built in light/exposure meter will be better that most light meters when measuring reflected light (light bouncing off an object that you are taking a picture of). It is better than most light meters because you can specify what your camera is metering. (Spot, center weighted, whole image, etc).
What your camera (any) is unable to do is incident metering. This is the light that is coming to a given area from ambient light or flash. Using the tutorial above will give you a psuedo ambient reading, but it is still reflective.
So for reflective metering P, M, or A will all work.
When using a flash remember that your shutter speed controls the amount of ambient light in the room and your aperture controls the exposure from the flash.
So as a real simple example let's say you have a model sitting in the light from the window. With the camera in M and auto ISO off, adjust the shutter speed until you get the amount of ambient light you want in your image, your model will often be underexposed. (For many cameras 1/160 sec is all the faster you can set your shutter). Now turn on your flash and take a picture. If the model is underexposed either increase flash power or choose a larger aperture (without adjusting the shutter speed). If your model is overexposed either decrease flash power or decrease aperture.

Personally I'd crop the second to just below his feet and turn it into an ultrawide image