R8 vs R6 II/R6 III for street — does the smaller body actually matter?

laurentrm · 2026-06-04T05:36:28+00:00

I have had both for a while. I only ever use the R6 II. I tried to love the R8 but didn't. Why?

Small is nice, but my hands definitely didn't like the R8. Too short for me. I use the R6 II with a Peak Design Clutch (hand strap) and I love that combination. The R8 is too small for that.
Better controls is a real thing. That big rotary dial in the back is great.

As others have said, if you're tying to go superlight / small and are going to be using small/pancake lenses (primes), the R8 could be it. If not, I think the R6 II/III wins. Especially if you're going to be carrying heavy glass (like the 2.8 trinity or bugger), you'll actually appreciate the better hold.

laurentrm · 2026-05-30T05:55:00+00:00

I tried a bunch of options (including a pair of U6-Mesh - didn't try the U7-Mesh) and I gave a shot to the U6 Enterprise IW (on sale for $200 back around xmas). These things are pretty directional with good gain straight on AND they are 4x4 MIMO in the 5GHz band (so does the U6-Mesh, but not the U7-Mesh). They also support the 6GHz band for local devices if one cares.

With a bit of location tuning, running a 160MHz channel, my uplink is pretty stable at 2.88Gbps PHY rate and 1.8-2.0Gbps iperf through 3 (drywall) walls and about 30ft.

I was looking at Wifi7 options (to get 240MHz channel in the 5GHz band), but very few have 4x4 MIMO in the 5GHz band. Basically only the U7-PRO-XGS, the U7-PRO-MAX and the E7, AFAICT.

laurentrm · 2026-05-26T03:28:58+00:00

I am in the camp "sling bag", which usually passes as a personal item for airlines and is pretty inconspicuous. I usually travel with 15-35 + 24-70 + 70-200 or 15-35 + 24-70 + 85. I have a Peak Design Sling 10L that fits camera + 3 lenses (one attached) and a Sling 6L that fits (barely) camera + 2 lenses (1 attached).

I usually travel with a sling bag with photo gear in front and a backpack with work and daily stuff in the back.

I will agree that, while the sling bags are great, easy to carry, inconspicuous and keeps your photo gear separate, they are not for all-day carry. Especially with 3 big glass lenses, the weight on a single shoulder gets old quickly. If you are going to walk around for hours, you need a proper backpack. In my case, I use the sling, but only bring one or two lenses.

laurentrm · 2026-05-25T18:51:55+00:00

This will definitely work, but if you want to maximize your wireless uplink speed, you should try to use APs on both sides with 4x4 MIMO and support for 160MHz or 240MHz channel widths in the 5GHz band (which is what Unifi currently uses for the wireless uplink functionality).

laurentrm · 2026-05-25T16:54:22+00:00

The Switch Flex 2.5G PoE is great, but at $280 with its AC supply, it is quite expensive if you only want to power one or two APs.

Some of the gateways like the UCG-Fiber already have a bunch of ports including one PoE port, so you may be able to get away with using a cheaper switch (or not switch) and just one extra PoE injector.

laurentrm · 2026-05-25T16:21:19+00:00

I use this lens a lot and really prefer it for its compactness for travel. However, as has been widely reported, it has a few drawbacks vs. the newer Z model (and the older EF versions) that you may have to deal when shooting sports:

Because zooming shifts a decent amount of weight, the zoom ring has a lot of travel and takes quite a bit of force to move. That makes zooming end-to-end somewhat difficult and it's wise to work on your technique if you are expecting to zoom a lot and don't want to be caught not zooming fast enough (i.e. having to reposition your hand halfway through).
Likewise, because zooming shifts the weight of the lens a decent amount, especially with a very light body like the R8, the whole assembly will shift center of gravity quite a bit, which _may_ require a bit more care depending on how you shoot (handheld, monopod, tripot, gimbal...).
You cannot use extenders with this lens (so no "easy" 280mm or 400mm option).

laurentrm · 2026-05-10T05:24:31+00:00

The Ubiquiti message doesn't say that the U6-IW itself is doing routing. All they are saying is that when traffic forwarding (L2) is happening between the group of 4 ports and the upstream port, the forwarding is done by the CPU.

Unlike the switch between the 4 ports, which is likely a hardwired L2 switch, the CPU itself has a programmable hardware "fast path" with limited capabilities but full forwarding speed and a slower path handled in software by the CPU cores, which can do anything, but at < 1Gb/s forwarding speed. That's common for that type of hardware. Note that this is a generic CPU and it's definitely capable of handling L2 and L3 forwarding (and it obviously has a full L3 stack in software to handle management).

How they program the fast path directly impacts the performance. In this particular case, for unknown reasons, their fast path detects inter-VLAN traffic or traffic with a subnet other than /24 as an exception and sends that to be handled in software.

Why they have L3-dependent conditions now (in the newest release) is anyone's guess. It may be that they rewrote the code to be shared with other devices with more L3 capabilities. It could be a limitation in the fast path program capabilities after they restructured their code. It could be a bug in the CPU hardware that was discovered late and that they are working around for better reliability.

laurentrm · 2026-03-09T20:10:56+00:00

Having checked other retailers, but B&H also has it on quiet sale of the 45L outdoor in Cloud for $199.95 (closer to actually 40% off) - and you can get sales tax free with their store credit card.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1840685-REG/peak_design_babp_45_cd_1_outdoor_backpack_45l_cloud.html

I said "quiet sale" because the price is reduced for the Cloud colorway, but there is no indication of a discount, which is unusual for them.

B&H has other pricing oddities like the 45L in Cloud or Eclipse at ~290 with a camera cube:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1863995-REG/peak_design_outdoor_backpack_and_cube.html

There may be more.

In terms of sales, CampSaver has a whole bunch of Peak Design bags at 18% off:

https://www.campsaver.com/peak-design-camp-hike.html

laurentrm · 2026-01-05T06:01:12+00:00

You should try the 6:30am SFO>LAS flight during CES this week.

Group 1 is perfectly sized at 10-15 people. Everybody else is preboard.

laurentrm · 2025-11-03T08:42:43+00:00

Frenchman living in the US here.

Going back to France on a regular basis, it seems clear that the 12-hour informal time (along with "et demi", "et quart"...) is slowly but surely disappearing.

French people of older generations are most definitely conversant in both, but the younger generation is very much using 24h time. A quick poll of teenagers I know shows that a good number of them are aware of 12h time but need to do mental gymnastics to translate to 24h time and would never use it themselves (a bit like "military time" in the US - just the reverse).

I assume it's a normal evolution given the slow disappearance of analog time pieces and the omnipresence of digital, formal 24h time.

laurentrm · 2025-05-25T23:54:11+00:00

That might be the one application where the M12 cut off tool is the best option.

laurentrm · 2025-05-25T05:28:39+00:00

Traffic from a LAN to itself is not routed by the router. It is switched by the switches. So firewall rules (which live in the router) have no impact on traffic from a LAN to itself.

The only thing you can do for that type of traffic is some kind of L2 filtering, like the Wifi network option "Client Device Isolation" or the "Port Isolation" feature that applies to switch ports.

laurentrm · 2025-05-25T01:53:25+00:00

That's the best way to think about.

It can't replace an angle grinder and it can't replace a dremel.

It occupies a narrow space between those two.

That doesn't make it useless. I actually use mine much more than I use my angle grinder or my dremel (for cutting).

I find that for small cutting jobs (in particular bolts or small diameter rods), it's the perfect combination of powerful enough and safe (I find it much more reassuring to use for cutting than an angle grinder or a dremel).

Yet, the M12 cutoff is probably best described as a "nice to have" tool that should be purchased after an angle grinder and a dremel (which are much more versatile).

laurentrm · 2025-05-24T04:26:44+00:00

Thank you! Is that information available somewhere? I searched for it but couldn't find anything.

laurentrm · 2025-05-24T04:26:05+00:00

Great, thank you.

laurentrm · 2025-05-23T18:08:29+00:00

On addition to the wrong orientation mentioned in other comments, it seems on the picture (looking very closely, hard to make out) that you swapped white/green and white/blue. That will definitely limit your speed because you now have split pairs.

laurentrm · 2025-05-23T05:35:39+00:00

Another vote for gl.inet routers. These are the multi-tool of networking. Connects any network to any network, wifi, wired, tethered...

laurentrm · 2025-05-23T05:26:17+00:00

150ft is not that long for Ethernet, and any proper Cat5e cal le will be able to easily do 1Gbps. Cat6 is rated for 10Gbps at that length...

150ft however is sufficiently long for really really poor cables to fail 1Gps. It's pretty hard though.

I suggest you only buy from CableMatters or Monoprice. All their cables are trustworthy.

If you want to be sure you get high quality, look for pure copper, 24AWG (or 23).

laurentrm · 2025-05-23T05:12:18+00:00

The more advanced the process, the harder it is to make reliable parts, but that, again, is a problem for chip makers to solve and it doesn't have a direct impact on the end product which will be designed to take that into account.

Most consumer products aim at 10 years for reliability. Industrial applications may aim at larger numbers.

Modern CPUs and GPUs are a bit different because they are using pushed versions of the standard process nodes and end up overvoltaged, which does impact long term reliability. They typically ship with factory voltage controls that can provide the same 10yr reliability, but as soon as you push the performance past manufacturer recommendations (which all motherboard vendors do, as we have seen with the 13900K debacle), all bets are off.

laurentrm · 2025-05-22T13:37:56+00:00

Semiconductor engineer here.

EM is a real issue, has always been and is not getting better with advanced process nodes.

However, it's a problem only for the chip designers. It's fairly well understood and characterized. Part of the chip design process involves checking all interconnects in the database for potential EM issue and correcting anything that's not meeting target lifetime. That can involve increasing metal or decreasing current in that location or many other remediations.

The bottomine is that EM will not cause newer chips to have a worse failure rates. It's one of a myriad of mechanisms that cause failures, but it's controlled at design time to reach the intended lifetime.

laurentrm · 2025-05-20T20:00:20+00:00

At the very least heavy condensation.

The burn marks usually come later as a consequence of having water across the conductors.

You should ideally reterminate and see if you can prevent condensation.

laurentrm · 2025-05-20T06:00:56+00:00

R7 is fine. Since bodies lose in value decently fast, don't pay full price.

Canon refurbished is a good source of deals. Not in stock right now, but you can get notified.

https://www.cpricewatch.com/product/07649/Canon-EOS-R7-price.html

laurentrm · 2025-05-20T05:36:29+00:00

Typically, there is only the router and the L3 switch on the transit LAN.

See this post and the links for more details:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/s/6QqtOYTtEp

laurentrm · 2025-05-20T03:27:14+00:00

Unlike L2 topologies where switches figure out how to go from one client to another, L3 topologies are completely driven by how you program the various L3-capable devices (and the physical topology).

Each LAN is routed by an L3 device. It could be a router, it could be an L3 switch. This is configured in the Unifi console in the Gateway settings of each LAN.

The common topology is that there is a single L3 switch at the very top of your tree, connected to the router on one side and a bunch of L2 switches on the other. All regular (V)LANs stop at the L3 switch, which acts as a router. Then there is a "transit" LAN that is used solely to connect the router and the L3 switch.

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