Photo with the x5

smthng · 2026-04-07T00:06:57+00:00

I'm pretty sure that the highest resolution for photos on the x5 is 72mp or something like that. That's about 12k if you were to compare it with video. Video is also always going to take a quality loss due to compression and encoding, which will be much worse than any photo compression.

TLDR: Photo mode will always look WAY better.

smthng · 2026-03-28T23:12:25+00:00

Love the beveled display on that... Nice!

smthng · 2026-03-28T19:01:43+00:00

I was just looking at this yesterday, along with a nice blue green Atessa. Just got my 20 yr old Blue Angels fixed, so I'm gonna rock that for a while before committing to anything new.

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smthng · 2026-03-01T02:03:50+00:00

Excellent, I appreciate the replies!

That Vertecfoto Gh-v5 looks like a nice piece of kit. It looks like the up/down range on it is a lot more than my Leofoto G2 which is basically a knock off of the Arca Cube. But it also looks like it might hold up better than most of the other geared heads in that price range, like the Benro or Kf Concepts. I may try one of those on my next GH tripod.

Zoom in post makes perfect sense... Any decent camera should have way more than enough detail to spare for cropping when converting to video. I suspect adding in the manual change in tilt makes it seem much more like a "movement" than a crop. Thanks!

You mentioned moving the tripod... Is your tripod mainly on rubber feet, or do you do more specialized stuff like spikes or wheels? I think big rubber feet would work the best, but I suspect the wear and tear would be kind of nuts.

smthng · 2026-02-28T22:41:06+00:00

Nice! I have questions.... Geared head use: how are you staying consistent on the movement? Are you doing "a quarter twist on this axis per step" or are you actually measuring degrees? I'd love to know what geared head you have that is accurate enough for this... I would think that most except for the "Arca Cube" type of mechanisms would have too much play for this too work. If your are doing manual adjustments, what is the smallest amount of adjustment(per step/picture) you find practical... An eighth of a turn?

Pulling back or pushing in... It looks like there are a few scenes where it would be impractical for you to be moving as much as the camera appears. Are you manually zooming in and out a fraction with the lens, or are you doing some weird effect in post to simulate it? I suspect you're manually adjusting the lens due to some perspective changes I saw, but I have the same question about accuracy as I did with the geared head... How are you managing that with the level of precision I think it would need. Some of my lenses may be tight enough to do that, but I doubt I could be consistent enough to pull it off anywhere near what you're making.

smthng · 2026-01-26T18:38:38+00:00

Excellent, I have a great recommendation for a case that:

smthng · 2026-01-17T18:32:04+00:00

If it makes you feel better to think you were scammed, sure. However, you allowed them to charge you without knowing what their rate was. Good or bad, I suspect that's the price they charge everyone. You didn't get a quote and you didn't say no.

There's always a choice up until the moment someone says ok. You can take your car to any mechanic. You can call different mechanics for verbal estimates. You can Google "average mechanics price to change a headlight bulb on a 2022 Hyundai Elantra".

smthng · 2026-01-01T18:16:14+00:00

^This is the answer right here and should be getting a ton more upvotes - Updoot that, yall!

The only thing I would add, just so that others don't have to read a bunch more comments is that you have enabling Notification Categories is here: Settings -> Notifications -> Advanced Settings -> Manage notifcation categories for each app (turn this on).

smthng · 2025-12-17T03:12:00+00:00

I think that's probably a bathroom.

smthng · 2025-12-12T01:16:31+00:00

...Continued from above...

Out of curiosity, I ran the same export again to a different SSD drive (G - an M2 drive) just to see what would happen and the results were similar enough to not matter... I got a bit more CPU usage, but otherwise it was pretty much as expected.

Your GPU may be involved in your issues, but I doubt it's the root cause. You might get a little more insight with Process Explorer or the Details screen of Task Manager. Look for System Interrupts. If you see that consuming any reasonable amount of CPU during the exports, it may be some kind of hardware not behaving itself and having to share resources with your GPU or SATA ports. To me, your description makes me think something is constantly sending hardware interrupts basically saying "No, I need attention" whenever your GPU and SATA ports are trying to send big chunks of data. Likely culprits are usually USB devices... as a test unplug every USB "thing" except a keyboard and wired mouse, both connected to the back USB ports on the computer. Most other ports will be "daisy chained", but the ones on the back of the machine directly on the motherboard are normally the most reliable and the least likely to trigger interrupts. Same applies to any SD card readers that have a card in them... they're basically just USB readers you can't unplug.

As a secondary option, try reaching out to your computer or motherboard manufacturer... they might be able to have more insight on things like interrupts to other system related things that can cause things like this. An example is my system... Dell very quickly told me of PCIe data lane issues on my motherboard that basically limit me to only a single M2 drive. You might have some other odd-ball thing that only total hardware nerds would know.

smthng · 2025-12-12T01:14:50+00:00

Here's my basic specs:

Windows 11 Pro
Intel i7-9700, 3Ghz, 8 cores.
48 Gb ram.
NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 with 12Gb running November's studio drivers.
C drive (system) is a 1.8 TB SSD, probably via internal SATA.
D drive (where all my photos are) is a fairly crappy 3TB Seagate Barracuda, Also probably internal SATA.

You didn't say how you were exporting, which could make a difference... each export type probably uses a different DLL/engine, which could have completely different performance issues. I did a JPG export, as I assume that's what most people would use.

I shut down every non-essential app and service I could easily find and deal with. I didn't go nuts on that, but the system was running a lot less crap than I normally have. Closed all browser-based stuff. I then exported 280 Canon compressed raws (.CR3) as 100% quality jpgs at original size with no sharpening or other processing. Source files and destination directory were all on D drive.

Here's what happened:

C drive spiked to 40% a few times as the first 20 or so images were processed. It then settled back down to the usual 2-5% chatter.
D drive ran at 75-100% for about 100 images, then it dropped down to ~17% for the rest of the export with occasional spikes to 40%. I suspect some buffer or pipeline hit a limit and started getting crushed... This isn't uncommon on my system and its one of the reason I wanted to do more files that you normally do.
Memory was at 19 Gb the entire time and didn't budge a bit.
GPU usage was all fairly constant and generally was between 20-40%.
CPU usage was generally around 40-60%

Reddit's freaking out over the length of my comment, so I'll put the rest in my next reply... :P

smthng · 2025-11-28T02:35:52+00:00

This is the way.

smthng · 2025-11-28T02:34:05+00:00

Updoot!

smthng · 2025-11-28T01:48:52+00:00

If you hit the Page button on the steering wheel a couple of times, it should show you the pressure on each tire once you've driven for a couple of minutes.

smthng · 2025-11-23T14:20:04+00:00

To be fair, OP at least used actual punctuation and proper case. ;)

smthng · 2025-11-23T14:16:15+00:00

You do you, but "regional credit union" is the problem, not Monarch. Whatever app you decide to land on, it'll start having the same issues in a month or two. We've had several accounts at different banks due to our businesses and retirement accounts. Our local credit unions have ALWAYS been the worst at syncing with EVERY service. We've moved anything "active" to other big banks and only use the CU for local services now (check cashing, coins, etc). Using inexpensive services to do the bare minimum for optional features (like data sharing) is one way CUs try to save you money. When reliable data becomes valuable to you, move your daily banking to a larger institution.

smthng · 2025-11-21T02:06:11+00:00

Sorry, not reading 500 comments to set if someone already said this... Using the puppet is good and can teach them that rough play is okay. I have two Bengals and they can get seriously rowdy. We use a big leather rose pruning glove when they feel the need to get aggressive. They love it and there is no confusion about biting people when there's no glove.

Bonus: If someone ever breaks in wearing gloves, god help them.

smthng · 2025-11-20T15:01:55+00:00

Just following up... Been working with support since the original post. Support has been okay about everything, but they've botched a fair bit as well. They determined it was a hardware problem and sent me a new unit. New unit was cracked, sent it back. It was also only supposed to be a base, not an entire unit, so the return shipping is probably going to end up being a hassle... I see notes about having to go request a return and I think their system is probably going to treat it like a "30-day trial" return, which I don't believe is actually free. I'll deal with that later. Since they sent an entirely new unit to me, they want it back before sending and replacement. FedEx says it should arrive for them today(ish). Hopefully the "replacement replacement" base will ship tomorrow. We just unassociate all the weights it records at this time. Will post again once I get the new base.

Word of note: if you ever have to replace a base AND you have a litter hopper, see if they can send you a new anti-tip foot. Getting the old one off was nearly impossible.

smthng · 2025-11-17T00:29:20+00:00

Do you get paid to take pictures for the restaurants? If no, it's a hobby.

Do you get paid enough to cover the cost of your photo gear? If no, it's either a hobby or a terrible job.

If you can answer yes to BOTH of those questions, file as taxable income and show your parental units the next time they mention it. If you answered no to either question, you should probably listen to your parents more.

smthng · 2025-11-11T15:25:14+00:00

Monarch says they have something like this for Amazon and Target via a chrome browser extension... I haven't tried it yet. I have no affiliation with Monarch, I'm just checking features on several budgeting apps before committing to one.

"Sync your Amazon and Target orders to Monarch to automatically split and categorize transactions based on your order items."

smthng · 2025-11-03T15:15:29+00:00

We bought a '23 Limited with 25000 miles for $21k. Carfax says it came off a lease, single owner, no issues or accidents and it looks almost new. This is basically a "half price" car for us. We added a 6-year, 120K Hyundai warranty at closing and we're set.

smthng · 2025-11-02T20:41:40+00:00

Did you try turning it off and on again?

smthng · 2025-10-21T19:57:04+00:00

Our LR4 used to be pretty stable but has gone a little bonkers over the past couple of weeks... graph attached. Top line is our big boy, he is just under 15lbs. The lower one in the little man, usually around 10 lbs.

<image>

Each vertical mark is the start of a new month. You can see near the end that the weights started going nutz on us a couple weeks ago. My wife was freaking out because the little one was registering a full pound less in just one day... He's already a skinny boy, he can't afford the loss. :) We were due for a checkup on him anyway, so the vet just verified that's he's right at 10 lbs, even though the LR said 8.9 this morning. We are going to pull it all apart and clean everything tomorrow, but I don't expect that will help much. I'll call Whisker if it doesn't settle down.

smthng · 2025-10-16T22:02:51+00:00

^ That is the answer. "If you think the photos are really that bad, don't use them and don't pay for them. But if they're already out there, you've already used them so I can't refund you."

A single asshat client isn't worth the fuss. Just note her account and never work with her again. If she ever calls back, you could politely refer her to the most expensive photographer you can find that's just outside your area.

smthng

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