Like most anything the answer is "It depends". For light rain I use a baby diaper or 2. They're pretty absorbent. Also, for heavier rain, keep the camera under an all weather jacket zipped from the top down. Just the diaper or the combination works very well for my R5 with 100-500 lens and keeps it ready for use plus something to wipe the rain drops off the from of the lens. For heavier rain - stay in a lodge with a good hot toddy.
My travel motto -especially by car is:
"The Road Less Traveled is the Road Best Traveled"
Another useful trick to get more contrast from the surface is to photograph 1-3 days before or after the full moon. Rather than being "high noon" the sun angel becomes more and more oblique to the surface thereby producing more shadows from the irregular surface.
From a generalization, look at computers that are configured for gaming. The CPUs are generally fast and almost all have separate high speed graphics card (separate plug in on mother board, not an onboard IC or built into the main CPU). Computer sales are slow right now so many preconfigured units are substantially discounted. I bought an HP Omen unit last December with 1 T internal SSD, 32 G RAM and 8G Nvidia graphics card. Similar units now list for ~$1k. Be sure to get Win 11 pro and be prepared to spend some time getting accustomed to the differences from Win 10 if that's what you currently use. I linked this up with my older 4K level BenQ monitor.
This all works well with Lightroom, Photoshop and the Topaz suite of programs.
I won't argue if the approach I use is best or not best but it works for me and I always know exactly where my photo files are to be found.
1) Getting the files out of the camera, all files are downloaded to a high quality HDD. I have about 4T of files now and just to not have to ever bother with disk space again its a 12 T drive. Each file is coded with date in YYYY-MM-DD format for finding stuff. Additional info can be appended to the end of this code without affecting the order they show up in a file search. I often do a quick review at this level to get rid of junk that I don't want to upload to LR.
2)I then import to LR Classic. As you noted LR keeps a list of all adjustments you have made to any image. These are stored in the file *.lrcat which is located in the main computer system drive - a 1T SSD. According to my contacts with LR designers this is a good trade off between speed and disk size for LR. I have only 1 lrcat file - ie I do do not create separate lrcat file for different shoots or different purposes
3)Any exports out of LR (such as jpegs of an edited photo) are stored in a separate subfolder to the original dated folder for that photo shoot.
4)All of the files on both the external HDD drive and internal SSD are continuously backed up on an automatic basis to a remote service. In my case this is Backblaze which covers all drives/files associated with any one computer for $65 per year.
I have had occasion to need to recover files from a failed HDD and also from occasional stupid deletion mistakes on my part. For single or small data recovery I have been able to quickly find my lost info at Backblaze because everything is stored just the way I have it stored locally. For entire drive recovery Backblaze can send a hard drive with all of the needed files.
If an artist creates a painting does the maker of the paint brush employed have copyright privilege? Or perhaps the company that formulated the paints?
Just askin!
My Canon PRO 10 has bitten the dust and I'd appreciate thoughts on the best new photo printer to select.
Criteria:
At least 13"x19"
Less than ~ $500
Light use primarily for home display or for self, family and friends
Good Color rendering on selection of professional level media
Professional level inks that minimize fading
Source images from Canon R5
Post processing on Light Room Classic
Source hardware Windows 11 based w/ 32 Gig Ram - BenQ HD monitor
Interface - any Wireless, Ethernet, USB
Preferable ink tanks, not combined printhead/ink
The R5 and the 100-500 lens is a really great combination. I consistently get great shots while hand holding the zoom at 50mm . The color depth I feel is better than my previous 5D IV with the 100-400,
If I really wanted to reach and find something to complain about its that the camera is way smarter than I'll ever be. It has many functions that even after 2 years of use I still haven't mastered. Since nearly 100% of my photography is wild life in motion using many of these unique tools has to be per-prepared.
OK One gripe. On the 100-500 lens if you opt for the 1.4x teleconverter the lens must be zoomed to greater than 300mm. So it is really only useful if you are in a situation where you know in advance you will need something between 420 -700 range. At that range with a small target its hard to get the desired target into the field of view and keep it there - again on a hand held basis. To get back to below 300 mm the the teleconverter must be removed. So I don't really use it much. It would be nice if Canon could devise some optics that would work from 140 t0 700.
I've been on 2 safaris in Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya. Took the tripod on the first, used it for 1 shot out of about 10,000. I didn't find a bean bag to be of any practical use. The damn animals were very uncooperative in terms of posing long enough for me to even consider using a bean bag and trying to scuttle from one side of the jeep to another. I used a Canon 70 D on the first trip and a 5D IV on the second mostly with a 100-400 zoom.
Recommendation - Use lenses with image stabilization, keep the shutter at a minimum of 1/1500 or 1/2000 and aperture f8 or better. Then switch to auto Iso if you don't want to be fiddling with exposure settings while your subject is doing something special and your fingers are anywhere other than the shutter release. Let the Iso go pretty high if needed and plan on using a good quality noise correction software like Topaz of others. High Iso just isn't a real problem anymore. Using an R5 with the 100 to 500 now. Very flexible and forgiving.
Believe what others have said about tripods in jeeps. Just totally impractical and most operators even shun the use of a mono pod. Plus even with a mono pod you'll end up trying to adapt the mono pod to the physical situation while you subject is laughing at you.
The real action shots are VERY transient time wise and often you really need to be ready to pop up and be shooting in less than a couple of seconds. Also make generous use of high frame rate continuous shooting.
That's why I use RAW whenever I can. Only use JPEG when trying to communicate with one of the other 8 billion people in the world.
New standards always have a hard time becoming "standard" in the absence of backward compatibility. Hopefully HEIC will suffer the same fate.
That's the theory. Automatic is "checked". System will not allow transfer directly from phone memory files to PC. Only path is via icloud.
My iphone 11 seems to want to default to HEIC. In fact it doesn't allow any other format even though supposedly Apple adept people say it will. So I have ended up with some HEIC files that are trapped in iCloud. I spent hours trying to get the files into a format that could be edited in Light Room. Simply a waste of time and $60 on a converter that was useless too. Interestingly LR at one point did import some files with the HEIC suffix but it couldn't do anything with them.
Since what I needed was to zoom in on one part of the photos for a courtroom presentation I used the SNIP tool in Windows to grab the part of the photo I needed. Windows photo viewer would expand that and let me grab the part I needed and then annotated it in Powerpoint.
All in all a very clumsy and time consuming process.
Apple should think more carefully about allowing owners of their products to choose photo formats and provide useful translating apps to allow photos to be accessed in formats that are compatible with the rest of the world.
All in all, I'm ready to go back to a fruit free life. Wasting too much time trying to adapt to proprietary formats, hardware, and systems* that offer zero to minimal advantage.
*eg I can only get photos out of the phone and into my local files by going through an icloud account. I don't want to be beholden to Apple for anything and only able to do the work I want to do if I have access to cell phone or internet links. No - the coverage maps that cell service providers produce are mainly for bragging rights. Even though I live less than 7 miles from what I would call ground zero of Silicon Valley cell phone service is intermittent and internet access only works when PGE says its OK.
I've been on 2 Africa safaris, a bear safari, and numerous birding adventures. Bottom line for me is the lenwith the lens the better your shot. Yes you can always crop but you'll amost for sure have a bird or a cat shot that would have been better without major cropping. Rather than renting or buying another lenas, get a 1.4 x tele-converter. You'll probably use it a lot.
Depending on your safari, most shots will be from the back of a jeep in Africa and most safari producers won't let you use a tripod in the jeep. Truth be told, that action is generally moving to fast and the tripod becomes a liability to getting the really unique shots.
Reputable safari providers won't allow you to take night shots of animals with flash. Don't bother to carry it unless your taking shots of the other people on the trip after a game drive.
Your "7 P's" appear to be six. The 7th often cited is "prior" - prior to prep which is often cited as planning.