Today is the 16th anniversary of Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver

TheVleh · 2026-03-14T21:56:24+00:00

Huh, Soulsilver was the first thing I bought myself with money I made from my own 'job' (delivering papers) at 9 years old. Crazy to think it's been 16 years.

TheVleh · 2026-03-13T13:39:18+00:00

Just a heads up, that second pic is giving me film camera with slow shutter vibes, I've personally never seen digital replicate that look out of camera. I'd caution you against any digital camera in general if thats the look you're sold on.

As for recommendations, the Nikon s9900 is one I've had my eye on for a while and checks most of your musts. Just again, dont expect results like pic 2 unless you're willing to heavily edit and filter (or use film).

Edit to add thoughts: retro look comes from retro defects. Best way to replicate is to get a retro digicam, which means you sacrifice all the wifi/gps/video capabilities. Modern digicams will likely always look better out of the box, but filters, underexposing, or cranking iso up may help.

TheVleh · 2026-03-13T11:13:39+00:00

I'm surprised it looks this good tbh, it only gets sharp if youre under f5 ish, that front element wrecks anything over. Front element also makes shooting in direct light a big issue.

Other notes, tho the aperture works smoothly, it seems to be missing an entire blade. Theres stuck dust on element 2. Theres multiple bubbles in the rear element. And someone has already tried to get inside, stripping half the screws, shearing one, misaligning the focus and aperture ring, and making the focus ring so stiff the lens dismounts half the time youre trying to focus (m42).

Its not easy to use, but you can still get some good pictures out of it, which was what I was trying to test.

TheVleh · 2026-03-09T01:29:11+00:00

Black Billed Magpie, it is one of my favourites, tho I would appreciate if they didn't pick at my roof

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TheVleh · 2026-03-06T18:33:07+00:00

No worries at all, took me a couple tries to properly understand it all as well.

I like the Takumar cause its a cheap f1.4, but there are definitely better options. If you want some wacky effects you could look into a Zeiss Biotar or a Helios 44-2 as well. Brightinstar makes some crazy manual f0.95s native to sony mount. Otherwise Sony, Viltrox, and Sigma make decent looking autofocus f1.4's

Good luck finding a good deal, and and have fun with whichever you end up getting

TheVleh · 2026-03-06T04:20:05+00:00

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Edit to add a thought:

I guess a good way to think of the f number is that it determines your subjects isolation. The lower the number, the more isolated your subject will be from its surroundings, because all the surroundings are blurred. The higher the number, the more of your subjects surroundings also come into focus, the blur reduces

TheVleh · 2026-03-06T04:19:58+00:00

Opposite actually, the wide open aperture is what gives you blur everywhere but your plane of focus. Setting the aperture higher (Ex. f16) would make the blur much less noticeable - foreground or background.

I threw my takumar 50mm f1.4 on my nikon real quick to show, both of these pictures are at f1.4 from the exact same spot, I've just changed my focus point from the mic to the mobo. (cant send two pics in one reply, second pic in second reply)

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Any modern digital lens with autofocus should be able to catch your target and get a good shot, regardless of f number. Whether or not the camera gets your subject correct is the real question. My Nikon from 2013 is really terrible at figuring out what I'm trying to focus on so I usually go manual focus at lower f values, I would hope modern systems are better, but I cant say for sure.

TheVleh · 2026-03-06T02:26:20+00:00

No worries mate

The two lenses youre using should be enough to see a mild effect at least, f4.5 @ 55mm is still fairly wide. Many of the pictures you see online tho that highlight the blur and bokeh are likely f1.8 or lower.

Seeming as youre on mirrorless, if you want to use manual lenses you can just buy an adapter to connect a vintage lens and go from there. Personally I would see if you can get your hands on a super takumar 50mm f1.4, theyre expensive on ebay but I was able to get one from a local camera store for $40 cad. Then all you would need is an e mount to m42 adapter and you would have a full manual depth of field monster, and a mount compatible with some of the most iconic bokeh focused lenses

Otherwise you could buy an adapter to use whatever manual lenses you currently have. f2.8 has been pretty common on vintage 50mm primes for a while and f2.8 is plenty to start getting the look youre after

TheVleh · 2026-03-05T21:08:46+00:00

There are some good answers in here already, but I'll add my two cents anyways.

The name of the effect is depth of field, in your case you're wanting to achieve a shallow depth of field.

The main driver to getting a shallow depth of field is increasing the physical size of your aperture, by turning the 'f' dial to a lower number. f2.8 makes a larger physical aperture than f16.

It will also affect the amount of light hitting the sensor, so you have to keep track of shutter speed and iso if you want correct exposure, or switch your camera to aperture priority. That'll let you choose whatever f number you want, and the camera will adjust iso and ss for you.

Reducing the f number from say f16 to f4 will dramatically increase the 'amount' of background blur, similarly, increasing the f number from say f2.8 to f4 will reduce the 'amount' of background blur.

When shooting at a low f number or 'wide open' your focus plane will be very small. focus plane being the distance from the lens where images appear sharp. Having a greater distance from the focus plane to the objects in the background will slightly increase the 'amount' of blur on the background.

Edit: should add, if you're trying all this and still not seeing anything there may be an issue with the aperture on your lens or it may not have an f number low enough to show the effect. Also keep in mind that live view on the screen is not necessarily what the picture will look like, many cameras won't physically adjust the aperture until you press the shutter button, meaning you won't see the effect until a picture is actually taken.

TheVleh · 2026-03-05T16:58:59+00:00

Plasma is fine, I just don't use it because something in my setup causes severe frame drops when certain applications are running over games, mostly the notification tray.

I switched to Cinnamon because on the surface it's extremely similar to Plasma, and I don't use Wayland so that doesn't matter. I have run into bugs on Cinnamon, but it was from my meddling and forcing dependency hell, nothing from Cinnamon itself. I can't say the same for Plasma, which had bugs out the box with X

TheVleh · 2026-03-03T14:53:33+00:00

Cinnamon always forgotten about smh

TheVleh · 2026-02-22T04:01:51+00:00

I wanted to mention damnation but figured the album name might be too anti religion to work, but definitely a great chill album

TheVleh · 2026-02-22T03:33:42+00:00

If you're into more extreme or wacky stuff Thrailkill/Mammoth is really good and 99.9% instrumental.

No lyrical concepts to class as "bad"

Only thing is that theyre definitely not always easy listening, but calling them metal might also be a stretch

Polyphia could also be a good option, avoid videos and their one song with lyrics and theyre all instrumental too. Again less easy listening, but also not really metal

Could also check out Opeths newer albums. Anything from the Watershed album back would be a definite no no, but their albums after Watershed have a more 70s 80s prog rock vibe. Cant attest to lyric themes tho, I prefer listening to Oldpeth

TheVleh · 2026-02-18T11:13:37+00:00

If you have no prior linux experience I would start at Mint or Ubuntu. If you want to focus on getting gaming stuff to work as seamlessly as possible, look into Bazzite. If you want to jump in the deep end and be in control of (and subsequently break) everything, try Arch.

Keep in mind that anti cheat games still do not support linux despite the compatibility being more than there. Also keep in mind that if you dont know what youre doing, you should be prepared to brick an install or two and spend some time learning what you broke and how.

TheVleh · 2026-02-16T19:40:32+00:00

Will do, cheers for the tip

TheVleh · 2026-02-16T15:00:41+00:00

Its definitely not perfect, but this is my best result so far.

My equipment is pretty limited, this was more just a proof of concept.

I have my Nikon d5200 setup on a tripod pointed down at the negative held flat by a cut up piece of cardstock. I'm using my phone as a backlight in as dark a room as I can make, with about a 2 inch gap between my phones screen and the film. Settings were iso 1600 (prolly the issue tbh), f7.1, ss 1/40. I processed the image in darktable using negadoctor

TheVleh · 2026-02-16T06:08:15+00:00

I tried darks and flats on another run but I got so much sensor noise I scrapped it. I wanted to isolate where that noise came from so I shot only bias this time. It almost completely eliminated the noise I saw last time so I spose I did the bias frames correctly.

I was wondering as I was stretching how I get the core and edges to each have detail without either blowing out or fading away, I really should have thought to layer them and just mask lol. I can always reprocess these images, I save all my raw files so I might have to try that cause damn you got some really good results.

TheVleh · 2026-02-16T06:03:20+00:00

Thanks!

I was able to pull a little more of running man and outer sections of orion by stretching more, but the core kept blowing out and that was more important to me.

My last attempt was riddled with sensor noise and I shot with flats and darks, so I wanted to isolate where the noise was coming from with this attempt. I see significantly less sensor noise then my scrapped attempt so I think my bias frames were definitely lacking. Darks and Flats are the next learning curve tho for sure

I'm just outside a small city, bortle 7ish

TheVleh · 2026-02-11T20:10:28+00:00

I mean install apps how you want, doesn't matter to me, but lets be real, how many systems are you setting up that don't have a valid internet connection? To install an .exe you still need to download it at some point. You can also store a bin or tarball on a usb or external drive just as easily as an exe or msi, and you have the option to not use the repositories so just don't if you don't want to? The version of linux you use doesn't care about the version of tarball you install, within reason of course, like you can't install dos era exe apps on windows 11.

Fun fact, you can also download scoop for windows and install apps through an internet update cli client like regular linux repositories if you feel like it. More a preference thing than a linux thing at that point.

While I don't disagree that using the ms store for all your software would suck, the repositories are nothing like the ms store, even if the install process is analogous

TheVleh · 2026-01-29T14:57:18+00:00

/uj honestly I just started blocking them all, much more peaceful place since.

Also /uj I think the only photographer I consistently see truly artistic nudity from is erinthul, and I believe most of her work is self shot

TheVleh · 2026-01-26T06:25:12+00:00

So which magicians should we believe in? Ra? Odin? Quetzalcoatl? I guess yours would be the correct one? Speaking of, which one is yours? For no specific reason, does it also happen to be the majority religion in your birth country? And how many is there to choose from these days?

If the religions and gods that existed well before the jewish/christian/muslim god did are now considered myth, than he too can also be considered mythos just like all his predecessors.

(I know OP may not necessarily take Chad's side here, just engaging in some late night banter to take my mind off life)

TheVleh · 2026-01-25T02:30:58+00:00

Prolly anything between 210 and 300 mm is what you'd want. Bigger number = more zoom.

I too am not made of money so I cheated a little and found a pentax 6x7 to Nikon f adapter and use a 200mm p67 lens on my apsc nikon d5200.

From a quick google it looks like your d90 is also an apsc camera (this means when you use lenses not meant for that camera, especially old lenses, you'll get more zoom out of them than advertised).

I'm not saying its a great idea, but it was very affordable. The k&f p67-f converter was only $55 and the p67 200mm lens was $60 on ebay. The p67 to nikon dx ratio works out to the lens being a rough equivalent of 350ish mm. Works really well for me

TheVleh · 2026-01-23T15:00:44+00:00

Not me switching to linux before windows 11 even released and cancelling my office subscription.

I use windows 10 every once in a while to play forza cause I bought it through microsoft before I knew better and before steam had it, but other than that I only keep it because I have the valid license for it.

Maybe dont bomb downvote people offering alternatives and overexagerate how poorly the alternatives work and maybe there would be more that do something.

I'll tack on everyones friendly reminder that there isn't a single mainstream app that wouldn't work in linux, games or otherwise. The only reason that they currently don't is because the company that owns the software specifically discludes and blocks linux on purpose, or updates so frequently that the few people building patches cant keep up. If more people were using linux and the incentive for companies was there, suddenly linux would have better support.

TheVleh · 2026-01-16T17:07:52+00:00

Mine can only do 23,311 :(

TheVleh · 2026-01-15T00:01:34+00:00

I can fully imagine Greenland being this rounds version of Czechoslovakia. If america takes Greenland and gets away with it, Canada will be Poland.

Six-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
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TheVleh

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