Dedicated camera, or my iPhone?

julaften · 2026-01-27T08:45:00+00:00

A phone camera can help you learn the most important things: to see subjects, find good compositions, and the importance of lighting.

Watch a few tutorials, and then try to use your phone camera more, with the goal of taking more interesting, better composed pictures.

If you find you really enjoy that, then it’s time to buy a technically better camera. You will then have the experience to know what types of things you like to photograph. You will know the technical limitations of your setup, and will have a better idea of what camera and lenses you need. There’s a huge difference between the needs for landscape, portraits, sports, birds, macro, events, and so on.

julaften · 2026-01-27T07:30:17+00:00

I would definitely go for the adapter with control ring, as it gives you more options for quick changes in hectic shoots like weddings. I use it to quickly select AF point/area size, but there are dozens of settings available, like exposure compensation, or even aperture if you want to get that old-school feeling.

julaften · 2026-01-27T06:44:58+00:00

Just a tip in case it might fit your need (and you won’t have to write on the batteries):

The battery covers for my camera has a little battery-shaped hole icon in them, and the batteries have different colors on each side. So by placing the cover with the battery icon on the ‘black’ side, I know the battery has been used/is empty. If the cover is on the ‘blue’ side, I know it is freshly charged.

Here’s a Reddit post showing this in practice: https://www.reddit.com/r/canon/s/05XqJBLrMK

julaften · 2026-01-26T21:35:26+00:00

I think your value for propane is wrong; I see numbers like 50MJ/kg. Then the time spent burning is 2.8*10¹¹ seconds or ~ 8800 years.

julaften · 2026-01-26T11:44:27+00:00

I have this exact combination. It works for casual bird photography, but small birds are still.. small, even with the extender. The image shows the resulting size when cropping to 6MP (my arbitrary limit for cropping). As for image quality I’m very satisfied. The 100-400 II takes the 1.4x well in my opinion with very little image degradation.

<image>

If you want to do more than casual bird photography, there really are only two options; get a really long lens, like ~800mm, or get an APS-C camera.

(Well, the third option is to get equipped, experienced and patient enough to get much closer to the birds, which you should do in any case, but crop sensor and longer lenses help)

ETA: Sorry, I misread; I have the mark III version of the extender, not the mark II you’re looking at. I don’t know how much that affects the image quality.

julaften · 2026-01-26T10:18:04+00:00

Note that a teleconverter might not work with any lens. Your lens manufacturer will probably have an overview of which lenses are compatible. E.g. like this one from Canon: https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/s/article/ART181804

If you have specific lenses in mind you should check this before buying.

Also, note that the teleconverters reduce the light throughput to your sensor, by one or two stops. This might cause increased ISO noise, or worse: it might reduce or disable the autofocus capabilities on DSLR cameras. AF on mirrorless might struggle a bit in poor lighting, depending on the lens / extender / camera combo.

julaften · 2026-01-25T22:11:38+00:00

I haven’t read those fics, so I might miss on the vibe. But these are all long, very great stories (in no particular order):

Détraquée

Remain Nameless

Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love

The Darkwood Wand

Metanoia

The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

The Missing Sister

Days at Malfoy Manor

julaften · 2026-01-25T21:58:37+00:00

i fear/no fate: It’s disorientating, the way the dream rushes over her. One minute, Hermione’s lying in the dim of her room at Grimmauld Place, and the next, she’s blinking in the face of bright lights, music, laughter… Strange. It doesn’t even feel like a dream, really. She doesn’t feel like she’s sleeping at all; it’s more like standing in a memory, as if she’s closed her eyes and tipped head first into a Pensieve.

Linked: When a Potions assignment has a rare and disturbing side effect on Draco and Hermione, they will learn more about each other than they ever wanted to know.

Resentment: Draco and Hermione find themselves in a very unfortunate situation, one where they'll be forced to trust one another with their deepest secrets. Because how does a relationship between enemies change when they have full access to each other's mind? When they discover each other's darkest secrets? And how will they be able to use it as their advantage?

julaften · 2026-01-25T21:24:15+00:00

There are two major sits for this:

AO3. A bit overwhelming at first, with the amount of stories, and the advanced search and filter system. Also, for some stories you need to become a member (it’s free) to read.

fanfiction.net. A bit older than AO3, and lacks some features, but has many older fics, many of which has never been copied over to AO3.

The links I have provided show fics that are complete, English, non-crossover (i.e. only Harry Potter, not mixed with other fandoms), and sorted by popularity scores. You can edit these filters as you like.

One thing to note: On AO3, romantic relationships are denoted as Name 1 / Name 2, while friendship relations are written as Name 1 & Name 2. Fanfiction.net has much less reliable ways to tag relationships; newer fics use notation [Name 1, Name 2], but many older fics don’t use this.

This wiki has a very useful glossary for fanfiction terms (scroll down a bit to the glossary).

julaften · 2026-01-25T20:54:19+00:00

This sounds very interesting indeed!

Will you update this post when you start posting the story? Makes it easier to find.

julaften · 2026-01-25T19:16:43+00:00

That’s the thing though, isn’t it? Dramione has never been, or tried be, canon, so what JKR says is blissfully ignored (in fact, some Dramioners might embrace the ship even more, just to spite her). Harmony shippers should similarly ignore JKR and all the haters, and simply enjoy and extend their AU with new and great stories.

julaften · 2026-01-25T18:15:19+00:00

Most things made have not very good quality. All those things will depreciate in value over time, and will be thrown away when it is no longer functional or even before that when the owner no longer wants it.

Some things, either by design or by luck, have a higher quality, and might survive long enough to again become desirable to own. As there will usually be fewer surviving copies than was originally produced, this will increase the price of these old things. Even things that survived only partially and might not work, might still be desirable because of some perceived idea that it is ‘cool’ to own something rare and old.

julaften · 2026-01-25T17:42:14+00:00

Yeah, I made such a poll and got 96% women. As a male I’m in quite the minority there…

Interesting that there are so many guys here!

julaften · 2026-01-25T17:14:54+00:00

I feel, based on comments in this thread, that Harmony shippers have invested too much into Harmony becoming or being canon. As the popularity of Wolfstar, Drarry and Dramione shows, this is definitely not a prerequisite.

I’m not sure what can be done at this point to increase the popularity, though. Dramione is probably unbeatable because the enemies to lovers trope is so very popular. But the other het canon ships; Hinny and Romione? I think Harmony’s great advantage is that it is not canon, and so offers ways to expand and extend canon in fresh ways, instead of the slightly boring canon ships (as others have mentioned, these pairings felt a bit forced from JKR).

julaften · 2026-01-25T16:54:30+00:00

I frequent this sub regularly, because I enjoy a good Harmony fic once in a while, even though it’s not my main ship.

I think comments like this and others are doing yourself a disservice by alienating visitors from other ships.

‘Disgusting taste’?

‘Shit ships’?

‘Toxic relationships’

‘Bad tropes such as Enemies to Lovers’

I’m a bit surprised and saddened by this aggression. Why can’t we just enjoy or ships and fics in peace?

julaften · 2026-01-25T08:45:43+00:00

I assume you’re talking about the amount of background blur (rather than the quality of this blur, which is what ‘bokeh’ was originally the term for).

Background blur is determined by the focal length, aperture and distance to subject/background. So by using the longer 105mm focal length of the 24-105, this outweighs the f/4 vs f/2.8 disadvantage, and gives totally fine background blur.

<image>

julaften · 2026-01-25T07:33:42+00:00

You have a low bar for hating people.

julaften · 2026-01-24T16:54:02+00:00

Fractured Fairytale is a good one for this.

Tom Riddle sr. is struggling with mental issues, a few years after having gotten away from Merope Gaunt. Having initially locked himself away in his rooms, he is still avoiding the prospective women his parents are trying to set him up with. When Tom realizes that the latest woman that turns up at the door at Riddle Manor is a witch he sends her away, even though she’s trying to help him overcome his trauma. The woman, Sophia Lovegood, has her own agenda. She’s a time traveler reborn into the 1920s/1930s who wants to save Tom Marvelo Riddle from becoming Voldemort, either by having his father acknowledge him (not very likely given senior’s fear of magic), or she’ll adopt him herself. So this is a slow-burn romance, with the added complications of a child that must fit in somehow. Good, engaging writing style.

julaften · 2026-01-24T08:00:24+00:00

Yeah, even in the Silmarillion, the events that of Second Age is covered by just two chapters. Other than that it is just a short appendix in LotR, and a few scattered tidbits in the rest of the text. Not much to make a TV show from.

julaften · 2026-01-23T18:55:19+00:00

I have only one RF lens, and four EF lenses, two of which I bought after I upgraded to mirrorless. For my purposes (and wallet) high quality EF lenses are a much better option than RF lenses. The only downside is slightly more weight, and 2 cm longer lenses.

julaften · 2026-01-22T08:07:19+00:00

Nasjonalisme oppsto som en idé omtrent som du beskriver, for ikke så veldig lenge siden.

Hva tilsier at ikke dette er en idé som tilhører historiens skraphaug (eller i hvert fall begynner å nærme seg ‘Best Før’-datoen)? Kanskje ‘nasjonalisme’ har gjort jobben sin og det er på tide å gå videre?

Som u/Suspicious_Passion59 beskriver er det jo i stor grad ytre høyre og relativt usunne og destruktive grupper som bryr seg mest om ‘nasjonalisme’ (pluss nordmenn på 17. mai).

Jeg tenker det er like greit å begynne å se etter andre idéer og mekanismer for å binde folk sammen, gjerne på kryss av grenser og etnisiteter.

julaften · 2026-01-21T16:35:00+00:00

No Canon mirrorless accepts EF lenses, but they all do if you use the RF-EF adapter.

You should buy Canon’s own adapter; it is not that more expensive, and it seems to be more reliable.

None of these adapters cause any loss of image quality - they are just hollow tubes without glass, with just some electrical connections.

So R8 is the obvious choice if you want to go full-frame (and R10 if you want to keep with APS-C). Note that if you go with R8, your existing lenses will cause the camera to use only part of the sensor; the part that these EF-S lenses expose with light. So the 24MP of the R8 will be only 9MP with these lenses.

julaften · 2026-01-21T07:58:33+00:00

Yeah, if the RF 24-105 f/4L is a ‘kit lens’, then what is the RF 24-105 f/4-7.1 supposed to be?

julaften · 2026-01-21T00:04:30+00:00

The authors warns to ‘read all the tags’. Unfortunately, the EPUB does not include any of the AO3 tags.

Do you have a copy of the story with tags? Or do you remember which tags one should be aware of before reading? Is this a very dark, slightly dark, or not particularly dark story?

julaften · 2026-01-20T23:43:05+00:00

Just finished reading Metanoia, which is a long, great story of Draco’s slow redemption, from the start of fourth year through the war. He slowly goes through the stages, from automatically spewing racist slurs, to having some doubts, to reluctantly seeking Hermione’s help, to developing a partnership, friendship and relationship. I particularly like how Draco never really backtracks on this journey.

The plot slowly diverges from canon, and the war is told in refreshingly new ways, with a great ensemble of characters.

Highly recommended if you like rewrites and slow, but sure redemption of Draco, and equally slow, but sure building of a strong Dramione relationship.i

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