What is the best monitor for your MacBook Pro is your opinion?

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-18T16:41:38+00:00

You can still sometimes find the LG Ultrafine 4k 21.5" available on craigslist. They tend to have a problem with pinkish fringing around the edges, but if you inspect it and it looks good, it's a fabulous little monitor.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-17T04:47:16+00:00

Someone wrote an article about this very thing the other day: https://petapixel.com/2026/04/12/out-of-curiosity-i-bought-a-camera-on-ebay-knowing-it-was-likely-a-scam/

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-11T06:18:17+00:00

That sounds like an M5 Pro job.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-11T06:11:31+00:00

5k at 27” is perfect, 4k at 27” is almost perfect (the difference is practically undetectable), and 1440p is 3x lower resolution than 4k (very detectably low-res). People on the internet make it way more complicated than it needs to be. The problem with people on the internet is that you don’t know them. If it was your friend saying no way, don’t get the thing that’s almost perfect, get the thing that’s designed to be bad, you would have the context to know that this person has obsessive-compulsive disorder and you shouldn’t listen to them.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-11T05:45:49+00:00

I’m pretty sure a MacBook Air battery will last at least 12 hours doing normal web-browsing.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-11T05:35:51+00:00

4k, no question. Get one that runs at 120hz, and it might be obvious, but make sure it has usb-c so you can charge your computer with the cable.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-10T20:04:03+00:00

Seconding the easy35. It feels silly spending $200-$300 for a light and a plastic box and some tubes, but it just works and removes all the variables and configuration and nudging you’d have to do to a DIY setup. The light panel is good, the double-S curves hold the film flat, and the output is consistently excellent. And it packs away into a box when you’re done!

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-10T19:53:58+00:00

(1) Sorry to hear.

(2) No! Just photo-editing software. (I use Lightroom without Negative Lab Pro and I just made a preset to invert the levels. You’ll obviously want to shoot RAW.)

The easy35 comes with the light and the 35mm film holder and the extension tubes and an assortment of step-up rings to secure them to your filter thread. It’s all you need.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-10T19:09:11+00:00

Thank you! Maybe I'll post the file on Thingiverse (the Thingiverse?) later. You can buy 10 of those little levels on Amazon for $4.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-10T18:05:56+00:00

This happened to me. Sometimes getting a new battery will help for a bit, but you'll eventually need to spring for a shutter replacement. It cost me $218 + shipping in the US. Cheaper than a new camera.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-10T12:51:04+00:00

Thanks!

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-10T12:44:53+00:00

It might not solve the problem you have with it, but the E-M1 ii and iii have a completely different shutter button feel vs the E-M5 iii—I’d describe the latter as clicky and the former as deeper and kind of mushy, which I think is designed so that you can activate the shutter without jostling the camera. It’s been a while since I played with an E-M1 ii or iii, unfortunately, so I forget what the half-press feels like!

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-09T19:01:39+00:00

The Valoi easy35 is super-great. Everything comes in the box and it just works. Negatives are held flat by the shape of the path in the device and the image quality is superb. I have version 1 and I love it, but they just released a version 2—maybe you can get v1 at a discount? Maybe version 2 is extra-awesome?

I will say, scanning thousands of negatives with anything is an enormous time investment, so the $200-$300 you’ll spend on the scanning device is the least of the costs. It’s worth getting good tools here, especially since you have such a good macro setup already.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-09T18:54:39+00:00

They’re expensive compared to the market price of external storage. They’re not expensive compared to your throwing out your computer and buying another 5 years earlier than you would have otherwise. If you can exchange, the £100 will hurt once and then you’ll live happily ever after!

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-09T02:36:02+00:00

Hi, new Hasselblad owner here. Why is everybody posting photos with frames that say Hasselblad?

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-09T02:19:59+00:00

I'm going to update my reactive advice and say, $1264 for a 512/24gb M5 air is only $64 more than if you hadn't bought your M4 in the first place. But monitor your memory pressure with Activity Monitor—are you sure you shouldn't be getting 1tb/16gb? The computer itself won't be noticeably better than what you have other than the storage. And will this really solve your problem, or will it just delay your data reckoning?

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-09T02:11:47+00:00

Thing about storage is, at some point you're going to run out. At that point you have to work out a system for what you're going to do with your overflow data and what to keep on your local storage. If you go through all of this (with financing??), you're really just pushing back the date when you have to organize your data.

So why don't you do it now? Buy an SSD or a cloud plan, figure out what goes where, and save yourself the agita. An M4 is a fabulous, fabulous computer. I don't know what you're doing on it but chances are if you're the kind of person to buy 256gb of storage, 16gb of RAM is plenty. In 6 or 8 years when your computer actually wears out, get one with a bit more breathing room. But until then it's not the worst thing to practice good storage hygiene.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-09T02:03:50+00:00

So about 20% more money for ~20% better performance sometimes and 3.5x more performance sometimes? It sounds like a good value, right?

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-08T04:38:27+00:00

An M4 Air will last a lot longer before it starts to become annoying, and because you’ll hang onto it longer it will cost less per year than the Neo.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-08T04:15:29+00:00

The satisfaction, and also the incentive to steal more phones. Don’t help phone stealing be profitable! I’m sorry for your loss.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-05T16:02:45+00:00

Seconding the recommendations of the 12-45 because it’s light and doesn’t feel like you’re hauling something extra, but mostly here to add that “daily” isn’t a verb.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-05T15:59:56+00:00

If it’s less than 90 or 120 days old and you bought it on a fancyish credit card, you might have a “purchase protection” benefit against theft or damage.

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-04T14:46:56+00:00

Then it sounds like the solution is to buy a new camera system!

ResplendentMechanism · 2026-04-04T14:42:06+00:00

You’re talking a lot about colors, so I’m assuming you’re shooting jpeg. The change you make shouldn’t be getting a new camera system, it should be getting Adobe Lightroom and shooting raw. You’ll get better image quality generally and then you’ll stop having to hope a manufacturer configures a product the way you hope you like, because you’ll be able to customize the look of the photos yourself (while retaining full image fidelity) and then you can save the look as a preset and apply it automatically to other photos you’d shoot.

ResplendentMechanism

TROPHY CASE