According the the original post:

Customer Service Call #1: We will extend the warranty for this issue.
Customer Service Call #2: We will NOT extend the warranty for this issue.

The solution is simple. Go for best, two out of three. Keep it civil, mention call #1 if necessary. Many times, customer service response is a luck of the draw.

Not sure what the fuss is all about.

Sony made a #1 claim. What some are calling asterisks are actually footnotes. They are being used properly to indicate both the source and methodology behind the claim. This is common practice. Footnotes were taught in grade school. It would only be misleading if Sony made such a claim and did not properly annotate.

Sony is #1 in dollar sales. Canon is #1 in unit sales. That's great. They both have something to brag about for those who care about such things. Neither is misleading. Each uses the appropriate number of footnotes (asterisks) to justify their claims and comply with marketing rules.

Sure, the image is what counts. In most cases it's the person behind the lens that matters most. All things being equal, I don't think Sony vs Canon vs Nikon vs whatever is going to make a real difference in the final product.

What should also be considered is that standalone cameras have become a smaller market. Most consumers are happy to use their phone as a camera (especially since phones are now marketed as high quality cameras). As the market gets smaller, it is harder to maintain as many manufacturers. At some point, someone is likely to fold.

If you are in the market for a new camera system, do you want to invest in the #5 brand which may or may not be supported in a few years? Or do you go for the #1 brand since that has a much better chance of being around years down the road.

There's also the availability of OEM and third-party products. Easy to find for #1 and much harder to find for the small market share system. (Remember Mac users in the late 1990s?)

Being number one is a valid and often effective marketing claim.

I wonder how many here were happy to say to a prospective client "I'm the 10th best photographer in town." If your business was #1 - by whatever metric you choose - would you hide that fact or use it as part of your client pitch?

Agreed with everything you wrote - just one comment on this point.

If you need a new computer now, you don't have to wait for Apple silicon to be released. The M1 (apple silicon) iMac was introduced last April. The 24" is only available with the M1 chip. Only the 27" model has the intel chip.

All current laptop models are also M1 - no Intel available.

That said, I would still agree one should wait. An updated iMac is expected to be announced soon. One announcement is expected at the March 8 event (although that is rumored to be a new Mac Mini). iMac updates are expected in May or June. The May/June iMacs are expected to have a newer "M2" chip.

I think some may be confusing the technology with the implementation. It reminds me of music and how some people misunderstand "auto-tune."

When people complain about "auto-tune" they are talking about the over-processed effect used in a lot of current pop-music. The complaints I see here about HDR seem to be similar - they seem to refer to the over-processed tonemapping effect.

What people don't realize on the music side is that basically all modern music (even live performances) utilizes auto-tune technology to some extent. You just can't "hear" it because it is used for minor pitch and timing corrections as opposed to the alien-voice effect.

HDR is here, most likely to stay. It is the future of the video world. Modern hybrid cameras support HDR video (i.e. HLG, Log, etc). Modern televisions support HDR. YouTube supports HDR video. Modern phone and tablet screens are HDR.

If your photo work is destined for print, HDR might not be that applicable. If you plan to display photos on a screen, HDR is very relevant.

HDR stands for "High Dynamic Range." Who wouldn't welcome more dynamic range in their photography equipment when more and more display devices can properly reproduce it? Isn't it easier to take a single photo that captures everything as opposed to bracketing and combining several exposures to manually achieve the same result?

Running Monterey and the latest Adobe CC apps on an intel Mac. Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom all seem to be fine. InDesign is a trainwreck of constant crashes.

I did this a while ago using a combination of my own method and some YT videos I found. Unfortuatately, I can't remember the exact steps. I had about 25k photos and everything transferred well. From what I do recall...

1. Organize the heck out of your Aperture library. Clean up and assign keywords (can't recall if keywords automatically transfer or if there was something in Lightroom that took care of that).

2. Don't import everything at once. I found that importing to LR one (project? album? can't recall the terminology) at at time was a better way to go.

I do remember that I set up Aperture to have everything referenced (not in library) first. This left me with all my photos very neatly organized in a folder structure on my hard drive.

Can't recall if I used the Lightroom aperture import plug in, but must have because all my keywords came across.


I'm sure you realize that you can't take your edits with you. Use filters in Aperture to create and segregate "output" versions of your edited photos. Bring those across to LR along with your originals. Again, you won't be able to adjust those edits, but you will have an unedited and "final" file.

I have a few K&F VNDs. (Should have bought one big one with step-down rings). Very happy with the quality. On wide lenses, there is some vignetting only at the maximum ND settings, but that's to be expected.

Already mentioned, but f you have a Mac, iMovie is the place to start. It's free. If you ever want to move up, the transition to Final Cut is a simple one.

Another great option DaVinci Resolve. It is also free and extremely powerful. It is doubtful you would every need to move up to the paid version. If you do, it (like Final Cut) is a one time fee. No subscription.

The advantage of DaVinci is that it is cross-platform. Works the same on Mac and Windows. The downside is a steeper learning curve.

Plenty of YT tutorials for both apps.

I've gone through different organizational structures over the years. One of the big problems I found is getting trapped in a particular software. If you change software, you have to start from scratch. Not fun with tens of thousands of photos. My current system works (for me) and uses, but does not rely, on third party software.

I am currently using Lightroom, but this will work with just about any software package.

First, I have several LR catalogs. This allows me to keep work, family, band, and travel photos all separate.

All my photos are organized on my hard drive in a similar manner. "Photos" is the top level directory. Inside that is a "master" directory for each catalog.

From there, I organize by date. A folder for 2021. That contains folders for each month (2021-01, 2021-02, etc). If there is a special event with a large number of photos, I make a separate folder for that (2021-08_carshow).

Photos are copied from the camera to the relevant folder. Depending on the situation, I may do a batch rename. For example, I may append "_Rome" to the end of each file name, do differentiate those travel photos from some "Florence" photos in the same trip. I might also create separate sub-folders if there is a need for additional separation.

At that point, things are pretty well organized and can be easily located without additional software.

Lightroom allows my to sync/update folders. All I need to do is open the LR catalog, right-click on the top level folder for that catalog, and all newly added folders and photos will be recognized.

In LR, I add keywords and other information that helps with organization (although that info is limited to use in LR).

From there, I do something a little different. When I export my corrected photos from LR, I do so to a separate folder. Those photos are then imported into Apple's "Photos" app. I find "Photos" easier to use for syncing with my mobile devices and sharing with family/friends. This extra step is not necessary as you can simply export to a folder in your LR catalog and manage everything from there.


I'm more into video these days and have over 10,000 movie clips to organize. For that I use "KeyflowPro2" (Mac only) with the same basic folder structure used for photos. I mention this because it can also organize photos (and other file types). No ability to edit in this software. What's really nice about it is that keywords (tags) you add in app show up as "tags" in the Mac Finder. So while the app offers some great DAM ability, it also passes info along to the Finder so you can find things even without the app.

Think different. :)

I wanted to do something similar for a project I was working on (my project was video-based, but the same concept).

My solution was Blender... open-source 3-d software. In the right hands, it can produce some very nice photo-realistic results. I watched some tutorials and generated a short video of a bullet shattering glass. My project got sidelined, so I never used the shot. Point is that I got a result for $0 investment and about an hour of working along to a video tutorial.

This doesn't apply if you just want the experience of taking a photo. If, however, you are more interested in achieving the final shot, 3D software may be something to consider. One of the best uses of that software is getting a shot that is too difficult or impossible in the real world.

The original post indicated that the OP was taking photos of a friend's child at the friend's request. Later posts state the OP is selling photos to others. This changes the activity from the personal to the commercial realm.

Commercial photography may (or may not) be subject to different rules in this situation. When researching the topic, the commercial purpose should be noted. There are "public" situations where personal photography is allowed, but commercial photography is not.

Double violation:

1. I believe it was the late 80s or early 90s where the prohibition on playing or quoting "Stairway" went into effect.

2. It has always been RnR blasphemy to purposely misquote "Stairway." That's just one step away from putting into some vapid commercial for a useless product.

This thread should be closed. :)

Just tell him it's a Paul Simon song. Then he gets to research two quality topics at once. :)

"Give us the greens of summers, makes you think all the world's a sunny day."

I thought the grass was greener on Kodachrome (or was it Fuji velvia?).

On a Mac, CMD-OPT-SHIFT W to "Export As" (not sure of key command on windows). In the "Image Size" section of the window that appears, change the values of width/height or scale. The file size of the resulting export will be shown on the left side of the screen.

The above will reduce the image size (dimensions) without a reduction in image quality (note: other factors can affect image quality when saving to different formats or compression settings). Also note that a smaller image has fewer pixels - so technically the quality is not as high. When actual size and viewing distance is taken into consideration, apparent quality will be the same.

If by reduce size, you mean "file size" then the only way to maintain image quality is to use a lossless compression formated. Try to "zip" the file. Or save as a tiff with a compression method turned on. You can also try PNG or JPEG (with quality at 100%). Any of these methods will likely result in minimal file size reduction. Bascially, the only way to get a substantial reduction in file size is to reduce the image size.