|
Forum: General Talk
08-08-2021, 01:04 PM
|
| |
Is it? Several times? I don't know, but even if it's $50 (or really almost any amount) more that's more than worth it to not have to maintain a separate Windows machine.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
08-08-2021, 07:43 AM
|
| |
The online version of TurboTax works happily with Linux, or I presume any other operating system.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
08-08-2021, 04:35 AM
|
| |
I love Linux on old hardware. For years I used an old Acer netbook as a traveling laptop to backup photos, basic edits, etc. It was painfully slow on WinXP or Win 7, but I dropped in a copy of lightweight Xubuntu Linux and it was quite usable.
What's screaming fast is my 12-core system with 32Gb of RAM and a 1TB SSD with that same Xubuntu Linux.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
02-12-2021, 11:51 AM
|
| |
That may be the first time those words ever appeared in the same sentence. One of the appeals of my wife's Jeep is that it almost revels in its un-sophistication. The entertainment head unit appears to be from a 2004 Chrysler. It rattles and has air and road noise like a 1970s British roadster. It's harsh on pavement. The plastics are hard as rock. Changing the oil takes 10 minutes because everything is right there, don't even have to jack it up. I think you can take most of it apart with a few Allen wrenches.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
12-10-2020, 02:18 PM
|
| |
I've played around with the Basic Stamp microcontroller, built a little robot. And I have a Raspberry Pi I've tinkered with. This is the kind of thing I'd love to mess around with more if I had limitless (or at least less limited) time.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
06-16-2020, 09:40 AM
|
| |
I've been dithering and price watching and hemming and hawing for a long time about a WR normal lens. I like my 15/21/40 primes, but there are days where the threat of rain makes them a poor choice. I thought about the 18-135, but never really warmed to the idea. I rented the 16-85 a few times and liked it, but it's pretty big and the aperture is not very wide. I rented the 20-40mm LTD on a trip to Germany and Austria last year, and it was nice. After reviewing the pictures taken with it I'm pretty impressed with the performance, and I like that it's relatively small and nicely built. The recently announced 16-50 PLM sounds good, but it'll probably be $1000 and who knows when it'll be released.
So a couple days ago I was checking around online and Lens Authority had a used copy (of the 20-40 LTD) for $340, which is considerably cheaper than you'll usually see it, so I jumped. Should be here tomorrow. It's my birthday present to myself. Haven't told the wife yet.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
02-02-2020, 09:13 AM
|
| |
I cut a hole in the desk for a 120mm fan that pulls air out. Should be fine. Hopefully. I can always cut another.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
02-02-2020, 06:09 AM
|
| |
My acquisition is a new computer, ostensibly for photo editing as much as anything else. For once I went reasonbly high-end: Ryzen 9, 12-core, 24-thread processor. 32G 3600MHz DDR4 RAM. A Radeon 580RX 8G graphics card. Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD. Driving a BenQ 32" 4K display that supports 100% sRGB color. Open chassis built into a big, old wooden desk. And running Xubuntu Linux - a lightweight distro for old hardware that is extremely quick on this rig.
It's nice, and it's fast. I'm upgrading from a 6+ year old midrange, 4-core system I'd put together, so a pretty large step up. One metric is that on my old system it took about 13 seconds to export a typical single DNG to JPG in RawTherapee. With the new rig it's about three.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
01-15-2020, 03:14 PM
|
| |
Thanks, I'll take a look. But I think I'm convinced I want a 4k monitor.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
01-15-2020, 02:21 PM
|
| |
| |
|
Forum: General Talk
01-14-2020, 06:43 PM
|
| |
So it came today. The outer Amazon packaging was pretty beat up, but the Pentax box looked fine, and the lens appears quite minty. I don't know a darned thing about real macro photography yet, but it looks pretty good to me.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
01-10-2020, 05:32 PM
|
| |
You beat me to that! I was a bit disappointed because I thought I'd never see one within $50 of that price again.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
01-10-2020, 02:51 PM
|
| |
I just found an Amazon Warehouse offer for a used/like new 100mm f/2.8 WR D FA Macro. The listing said that the packaging was damaged, but it was otherwise like new. For $177(!). That seems almost too good to be true, but we'll see. Should be here Tuesday. The cheapest I've ever seen a good used copy was here on the marketplace for $230 or $240, and they regularly go for over $300.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
11-01-2019, 06:05 AM
|
| |
Can't you just go down to Pep Boys or WalMart and buy replacement wipers for like $20? They won't be OEM, but I'm sure they'll work just fine.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
10-31-2019, 05:24 AM
|
| |
My 2014 Audi S4 may still be on its first set of wipers. I bought it in March of 2015 with 14,000 miles on the odometer, and I haven't changed out the wipers yet at 85,000 miles and they're still pretty decent. I've never bought OEM replacement wipers, but it might be worth it when these finally go.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
06-18-2019, 03:37 AM
|
| |
Come on in, the water's warm! I haven't bought/upgraded a system in many years but with the right Linux distro every machine my house owns is humming along nicely. Most are faster (or much faster) than the newer Win10 system I have to use at work, that of course includes multiple layers of security features that grind things to a halt.
My main desktop is a dual boot setup, Win7 and Xubuntu Linux, but I've only booted Windows once this year.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
06-17-2019, 12:41 PM
|
| |
My newest acquisition is a 500GB Samsung SSD to resurrect an HP laptop my kids were using. The old spinny hard drive died after only a few years. Popped in the new Samsung and after about a half hour I had a brand new installation of Bodhi Linux, Rapid Photo Downloader, and Rawtherapee 5.6, all ready for some RAW files.
Remember when installing a new version of Windows was hours, screaming, pulling out of hair, $100s of dollars? Now I have a linux distro optimized for older hardware, free, and seamlessly installed with photo tools (also free) in 30 minutes. Brilliant.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
06-13-2019, 04:47 AM
|
| |
Just received a 500mm Rokinon mirror lens that was on sale at KEH for $27. I always wanted to play with a mirror lens, will probably be disappointed by the lack of contrast and difficulty in focusing. But the thought is it might be okay for moon shots, and possibly decent hummingbird photos on a tripod, prefocused on our feeders. Even with the 55-300 it's hard to get hummingbirds that aren't very heavily cropped.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
04-27-2019, 12:35 PM
|
| |
I just bought a HD DA 21mm f/3.2 from Map Camera, a Japanese store with a large eBay presence. I've heard good things about Japanese sellers, and the lens appears to be thoroughly documented (like 30 photos with a white-gloved hand holding the lens) and in near-mint condition for about $50 less than I could find at US stores. We'll see in a week or two...
|
|
Forum: General Talk
11-15-2018, 05:42 AM
|
| |
Isn't that just TAv? Set aperture and shutter to whatever you want, and let ISO go where it needs to.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
09-25-2018, 05:08 AM
|
| |
I saved up my Amazon points and finally pulled the trigger on a HD DA 55-300mm f/4.5-6.3 ED PLM WR RE. Only took a handful of indoor shots to test out last night, but it's silent and focused immediately even with conditions that pushed ISO to 3200 and shutter speed to about 1/10th of a second. Hopefully will get to use it for it's intended purpose (kids' soccer matches) this weekend.
Now I just have to let the wife know what was in that box...
|
|
Forum: General Talk
12-29-2017, 03:18 PM
|
| |
I also have the Yongnuo 585 and really like it. I have little to no experience with flashes outside of tiny built-in things, but I've gotten some good results. Although my attempts at bouncing the flash off my 18' living room ceiling Christmas morning all required at least a stop of exposure in post... still a lot of learning to do.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
12-29-2017, 07:59 AM
|
| |
My latest is a 40mm Limited, to replace the 40mm XS I dropped and decentered. I found one for a bit over $100 used at Lensrentals.com with a discount coupon and a little birdie let my wife know in early December. A brilliant deal for a Limited. I love the compact size.
Condition was listed as very good with some paint coming off the focusing ring... but I can't even see that. I would have graded it excellent.
|
