Digitally? Unless that’s off limits in this situation. I’m sure there are analog paths you could take too, I just don’t know what they would be

Disclaimer up front: I have very little background in any of this.

Why not do three exposures on three different prices of paper with a color filter in front of each? Green pigment gets the green filter, etc.

Turning leftovers into fried rice generally results in one of my favorite foods. That’s not to say I don’t like more upscale options too, but man.

No problem!

On Google maps, “CVS photo” will turn up if you search for it. I suspect staples can do photos too, I just haven’t used them.

As for Meijer vs Walmart, we haven’t set foot in a Walmart since we moved to the Midwest - not that we were doing that frequently before we moved here. I have no experience one way or the other with Walmart photo, but suspect most retail locations are probably fairly comparable. The market doesn’t seem that big anymore, so they might even be running similar equipment behind their branding.

Hi fellow photographers!

👋

Do you render your digital pictures on paper (print)?

Yes! We do the usual 4x6 stuff, make a yearly calendar that I think is 13"x13", and have a mix of larger prints (yearly family photo) and canvases (things that will be on the wall longer)

Do you use a printer in the home for it?

No, we use a mix of local brick and mortar, Shutterfly, and I think CanvasChamp

What printer do you use?

N/A, but if you’re looking to buy the thing to look for is a sublimation printer. This is what photo labs use. It will cost more than an inkjet up front, but will be much lower hassle with no no clogged nozzles.

It might be worth calculating the break even cost vs just using a lab though. I suspect a lab will be hard to beat unless you print a lot.

What printer would you recommend with cost vs quality in mind? (8.5 x 11 prints would be fine)

No idea, sorry :(

Do you send your pictures to a commercial printer?

Yes! See above.

Do you goto the nearest Staples or Walmart and use the printers there?

I have used both CVS and Meijer (Midwest not-walmart-walmart), but mostly for smaller batches where shipping doesn’t make sense. No real complaints, but their machines can be a bit fiddly.

It sounds like the design goals Nikon and Canon were using were similar, yes. On a crop body, it’s great for capturing things far away. I used it for motorsports. It was also a good people lens, but at 110mm FF equivalent you had to have some space to use it.

Wish I’d had more ambition to get out this Summer, there’s been a LOT of sunspot activity that I’ve missed.

I can relate to this. Especially when it comes to reach and close focus, your gear can get in the way of the shot. I feel like a lot of this hobby is clearly identifying your use case (reach, close focus, speed, etc) and then weighing the lenses that satisfy that use case against their tradeoffs (size, weight, image quality).

Over in e-mount land, I have Sigma’s 35mm f/1.4 (the old HSM version) and Sigma’s newer 35mm f/2.0. The extra stop is nice, but I rarely need it and f/2.0 is half the length and weight. Guess which lens gets used more often.

Sometimes you find great deals, sometimes you find Chinese garbage. Luckily I never paid much for garbage.

The nice thing about buying used is you can usually sell it without much of a loss. I’ve been treating this as “longer term renting” gear to help me find what I want.

Agree on older gear being cheaper. I’ve taken many a great photo on my D40 ($50-75 on MPB) and D5300 ($225-325 on MPB). Depending on the focal length desired, there are solid used F-mount lenses around for fairly cheap as well. My go-to was the AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G IF-ED VR, which is a FF lens, but it still isn’t that heavy. I think I got mine used for $350 10 years ago and have to imagine the price has continued to come down. There’s a lot of fast thrid and first party glass available cheap too.

Most camera websites tend to be geared towards what’s launching now, and will offer comparisons to other current products, but some will let you compare anything to anything. Examples include:

• DP Review’s Studio Scene although you have to realize that image quality (sharpness, contrast) can be greatly impacted by the lens on the camera. I would use this comparison for color tones and performance at higher ISOs (for example, the wine bottle label can fall apart at higher ISOs on some cameras)
• Photons to photos will make it easy to compare dynamic ranges. Note that you’ll rarely be at ISO 100-250 unless you’re shooting very slow/still subject most of the time. I’ll have to follow up with an ISO curve of the photos I took over the past year later this evening
• PXLMAG has a nice tool to let you compare the physical size of different camera bodies and lenses

You need to identify what you’re going to be photographing, what you want, and let that guide your purchase.

Your decision points are:

• Do you want to go analog or digital? Analog gear can be dirt cheap, but film and film processing adds up
• If you’re going digital, do you want to go DSLR (digital single lens reflex) or mirrorless? DSLRs are basically analog cameras, but with a sensor instead of film. Some can also shoot video. They largely all have analog viewfinders that “look through the lens” via a mirror and a prism, so when you take a photograph the mirror flips down, the shutter goes, and bam you get a photo. It’s a pleasant tactical experience. Mirrorless cameras lack the mirror. Mirrorless cameras include older point and shoot digital cameras (think Nikon Coolpix) and more recently mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras. Most of them can record video. Mirrorless designs have been replacing DSLRs, so DSLRs are pretty cheap on the used market. If you’re thinking about an interchangeable lens camera, most analog and digital cameras have common mounts and thus a very big used lens catalog (see: Nikon F mount, Minolta/Sony a mount, etc) but mirrorless cameras all have different mounts. You can adopt analog/DSLR lenses to mirrorless mounts, but it adds some bulk and cost
• Do you want a fixed lens cameras or an interchangeable lens cameras? Fixed lens cameras can be more compact (see: Ricoh GR and Fujifilm x100), but interchangeable lens cameras offer more flexibility
• What style camera do you want? Do you want a high center mount viewfinder, do you want a rangefinder, or do you only want a screen?
• What sized image capture area do you want? In film land, this is your film size. In digital land, this is your sensor size. I’m going to use digital terms going forward. Smaller sensors are… smaller and the physics works out that lenses will also be smaller. Assuming of course that you can buy a lens optimized for that size of sensor instead of simply using a lens for a larger sensor on your smaller sensor body because they share a common mount and “bigger” glass tends to be more common. Smaller sensors give you a “crop” factor, so a smaller sensor body will increase the level of magnification relative to a larger sensor (example 25mm micro four thirds = 50mm full frame). Smaller sensors mean less depth of field, which can be a good thing (more is in focus!) or a bad thing (less subject isolation) depending on your use case. Larger sensors gather more total light (yay surface area), so they will have less noise at a given exposure than a smaller sensor… but if you have enough light it doesn’t really matter.

My take?

Modern glass is really very good, but analog and DSLR glass generally isn’t significantly worse. Analog and DSLR glass is also getting pretty cheap as active photographers move to mirrorless since that’s the new hotness.

Modern bodies make taking great photographs easier than older bodies in two regards: smarter autofocus algorithms that can intelligently choose a subject and higher burst rates (eg take faster sequential photos). More modern bodies also handle high ISO (low light) better, but you can generally avoid this with fast glass. The rest is pure quality of life - more preset shooting modes, connectivity, etc. Old cameras have been taking great photos since the beginning. High end cameras have been taking low quality photographs since the beginning. Higher end cameras won’t help you develop an eye for action or framing, but might make it easier to capture the moment.

If I had to offer a blind recommendation it would be for a Nikon D7x00 (eg D7000, D7100, D7200, D7300, D7400, or D7500). That was Nikon’s top crop sensor DSLR ramge, which does mean some bells and whistles but more importantly it also includes a built in autofocus motor. This will let you use any autofocus f-mount lens going back to the mid 1980s (look for AF in the lens name), as well as newer lenses that have their own built in focus motors (AF-S). You’ll obviously be able to use manual focus lenses too. The autofocus system is very reliable (use single point and keep it on your subject) and there’s plenty of great used glass on the market. I am personally leaning toward fast primes these days, as they generally sharper than zooms and offer faster apertures than zooms, but that choice is very use case dependent. I’ve taken photos of my kids at our local zoo two years running with a f/1.4 lens during their holiday lights display and was surprised that very few of my photos cracked ISO 500.

So, back to you.

I have a budget of ~1000 bucks

Go used! Also go mirrored - they’re in less demand now, and were once very popular, so there’s a ton of used product on the market for cheap.

I want something that is light sensitive

Not sure what you mean here. I’m guessing you mean dynamic range? Honestly, unless you’re going to be shooting super high contrast (bright bright and dark dark) scenes and don’t want to lose information in the highlights and shadows any body from say 2010 onward will probably be good enough. The quality of photos taken by my old D40 is not significantly behind my A7III or A9, or the Z6II I bought and sold used. The only thing to possibly think about is sensor size. If you’re going to be shooting lots of low light with motion and horrible lighting it might be worth thinking about a full frame body. Another thing to potentially think about is a body with a dual gain sensor, but these will be newer and higher $$. Unless you’re going to be photographing lots of concerts and museums, I wouldn’t worry about low light beyond buying a fast lens (f/1.8 or better).

has modern software

Not sure what you mean.

All digital cameras have some level of inbuilt software and it’s all varying levels of serviceable. You’ll adopt fine to any camera body over time - even on cameras with “old crappy menus”. The truth is you probably won’t be in the menus very often and can bind physical buttons to your most used controls.

You don’t have to use the OEM’s image processing software. Many use Photoshop. I use darktable which is FOSS.

Some digital cameras have a companion phone app. Most of these are pretty meh and aren’t needed. I do leave the Sony app running on my phone to share location information, but very rarely use it for anything else.

is preferably not Sony

I wonder why. Sony is probably the king of autofocus. Their bodies are also pretty compact if that’s your thing.

and has a low minimum focus distance

This is up to the lens, not the camera body. Generally speaking, glass designed for smaller sensors will have closer minimum focusing distances than glass designed for a larger sensor. If you want up close and personal, micro four thirds (M43) is king. It will be closer focusing and since it has more depth of field more will be in focus. Note that everything is doubled and halved compared to full frame if you’re trying to compare full frame lenses to M43 lenses. The thing to search for is “lens equivalence”. Note that this can be a bit thorny.

There are macro full frame, and crop, lenses but they’re less common. Especially in full frame, the shallower depth of field means stepping down the lens, which will cost shutter speed or ISO. That or you’ll have to use a flash. Most of my recent photos on beebutts were taken on an OM-1 with the 12-40.

It can be, especially the lens, a few years old, since I prefer to buy it used.

For $1,000 you’re also going to be looking at a used body - especially if the $1,000 covers both the body and lens. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with older bodies and they can/do take great photographs. A good lens or two is a much better expenditure than a “better” body with a compromise lens.

The thing I would pay the most attention to is the system you’re buying into. Even with used gear, you’ll still lose some $$ if you sell it to buy something else.

Feel free to ask follow ups. I’ll respond, but responses will be delayed.

I totally agree. It seems like the strong suite for micro four thirds. If you’re willing to play the equivalence game a FF body with a slower prime (say f/2.0-f/2.8) is generally as compact as M43 body with a fast prime (say the Oly f/1.2s). Likewise, a number of the long Oly lenses, like the 100-400, are actually FF lenses with a M43 mount. Yeah, you get the 2.0 crop factor, but if you’re willing to shell out for a higher resolution FF body you can just crop.

That said, on pure size a rangefinder M43 with a somewhat slower prime can be truly compact. It seems like that’s where the M43 market would be, especially with the advent of high res FF bodies that crop well like Sony’s R line and A1, Nikon’s Z8/Z9, and Canon’s R5. Heck even Fuji’s X-H2 and XT-5. But since neither Panasonic or OM Systems are making these bodies anymore they must not have been very popular :(

Does the stacking software handle alignment as the earth rotates? If so, that’s pretty cool. I’m tempted to take a stab at this if that’s the case.

The GX9 is a rangefinder camera without much of a grip, so the body is pretty compact. The G9M2 on the other hand is a M43 sensor in a FF body. Here’s the GX9 vs G9:

The thing you’re asking about is an adapter. You could get f mount to: z mount (Nikon mirrorless), e mount (Sony), x mount (Fuji), etc. Not sure about Canon, they’ve been pretty protective of their new mount. It will add some overall length though.

If you’re looking for smaller gear, going to a mirror less system will result in a smaller body guaranteed. Modern glass can be smaller, but that’s not always the case. Especially for APS-C lenses. Most of the mirror less OEMs (Sony, Canon, Nikon) have been favoring FF glass. The glass will happily mount on a crop sensor body, but it will be physically larger than necessary.

If you want to save some size and mass, micro four thirds is worth a look. Something like the Olympus E-M5 or even E-M10, or Panasonic GX7/GX9 is pretty compact, and there are a bunch of compact micro four third zooms and primes out there.

No worries! It’s something I finally noticed in other people’s photos recently and now I’m trying to duplicate it in my own. I don’t want to tell you how long I’ve been dabbling in photography before coming to this realization.

For OCD symmetry, I would have walked a meter or so to your left and lined up with the bricks that lead to the light pole. This would let you be square to the building across the street too, assuming the bricks run at a right angle to it.

Nice picture otherwise! People are always interesting subjects.

Homes in Detroit look awesome and are super cheap, especially for what they could be. They’re going to be a ton of work and if you have kids the schools are horrible though :(

The gentrified pockets look amazing, but drive quite a premium.

<e>I meant to reply to your reply further down. oh well</e>

I wonder if it’s just the era of architecture. Detroit has some truly interesting looking homes. Here’s a random collection from a quick trip around street view:

Detroit or another rustbelt city?

That was absolutely the case until very recently. Qualcomm bought Nuvia, a start-up that was stacked with former Apple engineers, a few years ago. These processors are just now coming to market. Laptops with these processors are benchmarking around MacBook levels (slightly behind single core, slightly ahead in multi core).

It’s very hard to argue against Apple hardware and battery life. Maybe with windows moving slowly toward ARM they’ll catch up some. It’s going to be very tough though - Apple has full control over their hardware, which meat they can optimize their OS for it.

I really hope the snapdragon x laptops gain some traction. I recently went laptop shopping and what I wanted (good to great display, stays cold, good battery life) line up really well with a MacBook/MB air. I just couldn’t stomach the stupid mark-ups for memory and storage. I wound up with a Lenovo 7x slim. Upgrading to 32 GB memory and 1 TB storage was around $115. The non-emulated performance on windows is solid. Emulated is generally ok for my usage. I’m probably going to try Linux on it when I have a light week, but I’m somewhat wary of the impact that will have on battery life.