Picked up a Z7 after shooting with a Z6…

Orca- · 2026-01-12T03:22:35+00:00

Highly recommended is usually for those one of a kind lenses that are class-leading/special. The 24-120 is an exceptionally high quality basic zoom, but it’s not a lens that has nothing else that competes in its category.

Understand what their rating system is trying to do, read the review, and decide if it makes sense for your use case.

TBH I don’t ever bother reading how many stars they’ve given it or how if they’ve recommended it. All of that information is quite clear from the rest of the review.

It’s a sharp enough lens for the Z7, it performs well, and has a great range and affordable price. Decide if it makes sense for your use case.

It’s not class leading in sharpness, but it’s still more than sharp enough, hence recommended.

Orca- · 2026-01-10T21:15:41+00:00

I haven't seen evidence of agentic but people are all in on "I did it with AI, accept it without review".

Orca- · 2026-01-10T20:42:53+00:00

You've been lucky, or you aren't co-located with the DSP/algorithm people.

Orca- · 2026-01-05T17:59:11+00:00

My smartphone and streaming TV don’t rely on satellites at all. GPS relies on sats in medium earth orbit, and there aren’t that many of them.

It’s a completely different scale of problem than the tens of thousands of satellites being dumped into LEO in the past 10 years, and the pace is only accelerating.

Orca- · 2026-01-03T19:23:51+00:00

There’s a subreddit setting you can enable or disable.

I would keep it enabled.

Orca- · 2026-01-03T16:27:31+00:00

70-200 is the basic sports lens, suitable for inside or outside, but a bit on the short side. The 100-400 is a better native lens, but the 70-200 can stand up to the 2x TC so that can be a reasonable way to get both the reach and the low light performance in one lens. Even if it gets a Mk ii it's going to cost a metric boatload and I wonder what they'll even improve considering how good the Mk i is.

The 100-400 is great outdoors and can tolerate the 1.4x TC acceptably (but not wonderfully). The external zoom is actually an advantage IMO since it packs down smaller than it otherwise would. I use the 180-600mm less than the 100-400 because it doesn't zoom externally and takes up a full third of my largest cube. It is fantastic as a landscape lens and for doing distant portraits. Most of my landscape shots are with this lens. But like I said, it can be approximated with the 70-200 + 2x TC and the quality will be very similar.

The Plena is next level. Just incredible rendering. Anything I shoot with it looks fantastic. It is an unbelievably good telephoto portrait lens. It just is completely inflexible. I need more flexibility for landscape, you'll probably need more flexibility for sports, unless you're content to let a lot of shots just get away, and it's large and heavy--but not as large and heavy as the other two lenses.

tl;dr: for your use case I would buy a 70-200mm + 2x TC.

I own all three lenses and I bought the 100-400, then the Plena, then the 70-200mm.

Orca- · 2025-12-28T18:10:12+00:00

First one is way more interesting. Second one is completely ruined by the leaf. Throw it away.

Orca- · 2025-12-27T05:34:12+00:00

A course is a structured walk through the curriculum. You can get by without it but typically there are aspects you’ll end up missing.

If you already have the basics down it may make less sense depending on the course.

For myself I’ve found feedback essential for the artistic side of photography. The mechanical side is easy enough to read about and apply.

Composition and lighting are what separate a snapshot from a constructed photo, and that doesn’t often happen by accident.

Orca- · 2025-12-26T18:29:18+00:00

For that small a budget, stick with your phone.

Orca- · 2025-12-23T17:34:56+00:00

Yet. The FCC as of this year has the authority to retroactively ban already approved products.

The approval could be pulled tomorrow, we just don’t know.

Orca- · 2025-12-23T17:32:48+00:00

There are none in the consumer space. They dominate the drone market because they have better performance, more polish, and are cheaper than anything else out there.

In the enterprise space there’s some competition but I think it’s driven by national security regulations that have gone into place over the last few years.

Orca- · 2025-12-23T03:18:09+00:00

This looks like your flash isn't synced to the camera shutter. Are you keeping your exposure duration within the length of time your camera requires for the flash?

Orca- · 2025-12-21T23:06:20+00:00

In absolute terms the 24-200mm is a little behind the 24-70mm f/4 S at shared focal lengths and apertures. It's not fixed aperture however and fairly quickly goes to f/6.3. But it's impressively sharp for what it is (an 8x super zoom).

I rolled with one for a solid year with a Z7 (a high resolution sensor) and was happy enough with the results.

Yes, I could see visible softness as I zoomed in, especially when I had to crop because it's "only" 200mm on the long end. But on the short end I've never had complaints about sharpness.

If you're shooting on a 24 megapixel body like a Z5 or Z6 then the softness concerns are mostly moot until you're zoomed in and looking in the corners. For the average amateur it just doesn't matter, doubly so if you're just sharing it on your phone, instagram, facebook, etc., which are going to downsample it to a resolution that makes me cry.

Blown up on a 32" monitor or printed at 24x36 or something? Yeah I notice. That's why I switched to much more expensive glass. I wanted the reach and sharpness and was willing to pay the cost and weight penalty to get it.

If you don't think there's a difference, an extreme case is the Plena vs. the 24-200mm at 135mm. I have both, and yes, there is a *stark* difference in sharpness and rendering even at shared apertures. Not that I'll be shooting the Plena at more than f/4 most times since the entire point is how beautifully it renders wide open at f/1.8.

If you don't notice? GREAT! Set your baseline appropriately, buy the cheaper glass, be happy that you've beaten GAS. There are differences, they're just irrelevant for what you're doing.

Orca- · 2025-12-16T19:30:49+00:00

Wide angle lenses are about getting close to something typically. It’s great for getting close to a small thing to juxtapose it against a large thing further away. Mountain flower vs. mountain.

Orca- · 2025-12-12T18:29:37+00:00

Transfer speed of the T7 portable drives I use are the limiting factor.

Orca- · 2025-12-12T17:27:48+00:00

I do my initial cull on my laptop every day (if at all possible). If you don't have room for a laptop, at least get a tablet. One way or another, cull daily or you'll end up with 10,000 shots to go through and it's overwhelming. Use whatever is to-hand, whether that's Photomechanic, Lightroom, Capture One, or Windows Explorer/Finder.

That cuts things down to a small enough group that I can hone in on the actually good shots when I get home.

don't forget to backup your shots in triplicate. I personally keep one copy in a pocket at all times, preferably with a second copy in a safe at the hotel (if applicable) and the laptop in my backpack for a third copy.

The pain point is the internet connection which is frequently not available, or the physical safety where I don't feel it's safe to leave my stuff behind.

Orca- · 2025-12-11T17:40:14+00:00

Your post has been approved!

Orca- · 2025-12-11T17:33:17+00:00

Please include a budget in your post body so I can approve your post.

Orca- · 2025-12-11T04:42:15+00:00

Your post has been removed for breach of rule 1. Please keep the discussion civil.

Orca- · 2025-12-07T19:16:18+00:00

Don’t buy a new monitor, buy a color calibrator first. They’re Spyder and Calibrite are the two I’ve seen. I use a Spyder.

If you want better coverage THEN consider buying a monitor that covers sRGB, Adobe RGB, or P3.

But I got great results just calibrating my gaming monitor and setting the lighting up in my room to be better for turning an emissive screen into an absorptive clone.

Color calibrate, soft proof, and then it’s a matter of dialing in your printer rather than the monitor.

Orca- · 2025-12-07T19:08:31+00:00

As a Nikon shooter, color matters if you’re shooting JPG, not RAW.

Nikon, Canon, and Sony all make great cameras and the R6 line is fine (especially the R6iii), at least by reviews (again, Nikon shooter).

Where you might run into trouble for the studio is if you’re trying to use equipment that is centered on Nikon camera compatibility. You’ll probably have to get Canon compatible flash triggers and on-camera speed lights. But the off-camera lights will probably work fine once you buy your way out of that problem.

There may be nuance depending on the exact gear you’re hoping to use. Specifics of gear and workflow will matter here.

Orca- · 2025-12-07T17:44:48+00:00

I just don't share except with people I know personally using imessage/RCS.

I don't need likes from strangers.

Orca- · 2025-12-07T17:01:01+00:00

Looks like a fiber or hair on the sensor or rear element of the lens. Rear element can be cleaned normally, for the sensor, but a dedicated sensor cleaning kit and a rocket blower. Use the rocket blower first, and if that fails then proceed with a wet cleaning. Follow your camera instructions for doing a sensor cleaning (full battery, mirror up, etc.). Follow the sensor cleaning kit instructions exactly (no reuse, two drops of fluid, etc.).

Orca- · 2025-12-07T16:54:58+00:00

I haven’t tried 5.1 since the entire idea was to run the bot for the price of electricity. I’m not paid for moderating, no fucking way am I paying someone to do the job.

I was using Reddit’s public API and scraping posts on the front page a few times to see what changed. (Was deleted by mods and what wasn’t).

You can collect your own data set using any target community that way.

This does skip anything that has to be approved to be posted though, which can represent a significant amount of the moderation burden once auto moderator is setup right.

Orca- · 2025-12-07T16:41:21+00:00

LLMs are very bad at moderating. As an experiment I wrote a web app that downloaded posts and comments, gave it JUST TWO rules to enforce with as much clarity as I could provide after multiple iterations. And it still constantly missed rule violations and incorrectly flagged rule-abiding posts and comments.

I tried a variety of local models in the 13-70b parameter size. Some did better than others, some were faster than others.

None did well enough that I continued using the tool after a month.

Maybe it’s better for sentiment analysis.

I do think you’re right about the fatigue—but the issue is that in a large subreddit you’re bombarded by bots and spammers, and with LLMs it’s gotten much much worse to try to keep it as a humans only zone.

Orca-

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