dahlfors

Hey Andrew! I haven't been active in the forums here for years, just looking in here now and then - mostly because my life has taken many new directions since the phase when I was very much into photography and video. I've been working from home in isolation for a long time now, it's been 1.5 years ago since I worked in offices. It's a big difference in social life, especially since I've kept my social circle small. I can't help you in making a decision or finding out a next step. But I thought I'd fill in how I approach times of low motivation, or how I approach it whenever I feel like my life is stuck. Maybe it can inspire, give ideas? For me, whenever I've felt stuck in life or that there's nothing new in my life, I have often had what I guess could be called an existential crisis. What I have found that I have done to process this, is to evolve myself by trying new things - from learning new computer skills, softwares, and programming languages to running, road biking, kayaking, hiking, winter camping, mountaineering, skiing and rock climbing. What I have found, is that I enjoy learning new things. I love exploring the wild. I rarely use anything else than phone cameras these days, but through my interests I've found a big interest in GoPro cameras and I recently also picked up a drone - which gives a new dimension when I'm exploring nature. Since I spend my work days in front of computers, I have cut down on the time I spend on computers at home, so the goal I have when I film these days is to do as much as possible when shooting, and as little as possible editing at home. I feel stuck and bored to death when I sit too long in front of Premiere, Resolve or Lightroom. But, whenever I focus on a hobby like skiing and film that with the Gopro, I try to focus on making a process where I can film myself or friends skiing in one go from top to bottom. I give myself the opportunity to make something with one shot of video, where I don't need to edit, only do some minor adjustments - and that gives me inspiration. The skiing itself is like meditation - but it also gives me an opportunity to make a video, that shows what skiing is all about. Here's one of my videos. I like that it shows skiing raw just the way it is, and it also makes it an easy process for me to produce videos like this: So whenever life feels uninspiring, or you feel that you're stuck in one way or the other - find new things to try out, make changes to what you do, whether it is small steps or bigger steps. Keep doing what you get inspired of and what you find fun, and take a break from what you don't enjoy. I love this forum and the discussions going on here, and I think it's impressive what you've built up over the years. But at some point you need to try new things if you feel stuck. I hope this site lives on, and I hope you can find new inspiration and joy in your life. Cheers!

For right now, I'd look into the option of selling the D700 and replacing it with a D750. Makes sense since the video image from D750 and D800 would match up pretty nicely with the colors, and makes sense considering you're heavily invested in Nikon lenses. Nikon has a mirrorless camera in the works if you're ready to have a possibly long wait. It might be released in 2018, might be for later in 2019: https://nikonrumors.com/category/nikon-mirrorless-camera/ If you go the GH5 route, you'll probably want to invest in a few more lenses. With a full frame Sony you'd at least be able to match lenses better to the sensor, and there are adapters for matching up with your Nikon G lenses, although you usually lose the smallest apertures with them.

"How bad will it really be? I asked Linux's creator Linus Torvalds, who said: "There's no one number. It will depend on your hardware and on your load. I think 5 percent for a load with a noticeable kernel component (e.g. a database) is roughly in the right ballpark. But if you do micro-benchmarks that really try to stress it, you might see double-digit performance degradation." http://www.zdnet.com/article/major-linux-redesign-in-the-works-to-deal-with-intel-chip-security-problem/ "Will these fixes slow down my PC or Mac? It’s complicated, but if you’re not working on intensive tasks, it’s looking like you won’t take much of a hit. More recent Intel processors from the Haswell (4th-gen) era onward have a technology called PCID (Process-Context Identifiers) enabled and are said to suffer less of a performance hit. Plus, some applications—most notably virtualization and data center/cloud workloads—are affected more than others. Intel confirmed that the performance loss will be dependent on workload, and “should not be significant” for average home computer users." https://www.pcworld.com/article/3245606/security/intel-x86-cpu-kernel-bug-faq-how-it-affects-pc-mac.html --- Basically, the fix for this bug will introduce a delay on memory reads and writes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_page-table_isolation for a summary of the Linux implementation with links to further reading. Windows/MacOS will most likely implement similar strategies). So, everything that deals with many small (4kB or such) memory reads and writes will have a heavy impact. These kind of memory reads and writes aren't that common with normal application use or gaming. Yes, you will have a performance hit with such applications and gaming too, but likely quite unnoticeable performance hits.

This is bad for hosting, servers, cloud services etc. The nature of this bug and the fix for it won't have any serious speed impact on normal client computer usage, like gaming, video editing etc.

I hope so too! I got a D800 - and it's easily enough for all of my photography needs. A smaller DX body with 4k and 1080p at 120 fps and affordable price - yes please!

Hah. I have used the new Macbook Pro 15" with touch bar for half a year now, and I hate those arrows SO MUCH. The short travel keyboard you can get used to over time. I type pretty well on it by now. But those arrow keys are so tiny, and you can't hit them by feel alone like the old ones. I still miss a real Esc key as well. Touch bar - whatever. I don't use it for anything else than controlling volume/brightness.

Any component issue in the storage controller will have the effect that the storage media goes dead. That does not matter if there is wear levelling or not, so there is no way for you as a user to tell if controller just had bad components, or if it would have been something related to wear levelling in the controller that made it die. The component death issue applies to SSDs and traditional hard disks controllers as well. With older hard disks the controller components were fairly large so that people skilled with electronics could exchange the controllers. On SD, that is a very complex task. Anyway, I had a quick look around. The SD specs do not require the cards to be able to function on power loss at writing. However, while it is not in the specifications, many manufacturers apply methods against it. Which methods they use are unknown, but the methods that would make most sense are either journaled writing or a battery backup that can last for as long it is needed to ensure that power loss doesn't break the wear levelling system. Suffice to say, you are not likely to see these things handled properly on the cheapest of the cheapest cards. I found information that Sandisk had stated that they use some kind of protection against this, but they wouldn't state what methods they apply. I didn't search further for other manufacturers, since Sandisk is the brand that I've kept using.

As far as I know, the controllers are all closed source and there is no public detailed information on exactly how the controllers work from different manufacturers. Despite that we can't know how it works for sure, it would not make sense to design the controller so the media itself wouldn't be able to handle power loss or removal. Otherwise the manufacturers would start getting large return rates. Same method as is used on journaling file systems should work perfectly fine for wear leveling of flash memories, at a very small storage cost. This would mean that you would see data corruption (corrupt files, broken partitions / file system), but still keep a working flash card / SSD. Have you heard of flash media behaving like you describe after power loss on write?

I read this quote in the locked Lexar memory card topic: "The card was corrupted so badly that computer/rescue software's only recognized it as 7,60gb drive... Even that it is 128gb card. Tried to format it with panasonic, canon and sony cameras, nothing. With computer and all formatting methods, nothing. So totally destroyed card. Just rubbish." Since noone else mentioned it in the thread, I thought I'd mention it: THIS IS PERFECTLY NORMAL BEHAVIOUR. (Teemus card most likely wasn't broken at all - it just had garbage data in the middle of the partition which cameras and operating systems interpreted as end of partition - or made them hang). So, Windows has no builtin partition management if you have broken the partitions (or managed to garbage the data by removing the media mid-writing) on any USB flash media or CF/SD cards. I'm not sure if MacOS has the ability either in this case. However, Linux has tools for fixing these issues (and I've had to turn to Linux a few times to fix my media after experimenting with them too much...). In case you'd have partitioned a CF/SD card with just 8 GB - then all windows will be able to do is to recognize that 8 GB. However, in Linux you can remove that partition and create a new one spanning the full card, 64 GB, 128 GB or however big it is. After remaking these partitions, you'll be able to format the full card in Windows / MacOS or in camera. Hope this might help some of you in case you break your flash media partitions...

Bad music videos? I'll warn you, the falsely sung chorus might get stuck in your head...

Yes. I'm so tired seeing same extreme color schemes in so many films these days. I don't get why whole scenes should be colored in one single color, I don't get why every film needs to rely so heavily on the orange/teal coloring. I think there must be some rule that you are not allowed to release your film to cinemas unless enough orange/teal can be detected...

Yes. The one thing darktable has going for it is that it is open source and free. Pretty decent features despite being free. Haven't used Capture One myself - but they've been around since before Lightroom, so I bet it's a very mature product!

If I didn't have a CC subscription through work, I'd probably give the open source Darktable a try: http://www.darktable.org

Same. I really enjoy using the new MBP 15". I just wish it would be possible to install 32 GB of RAM. 16 GB being the max in a professional laptop in 2016-2017 is laughable. Also, I wish I still had a physical esc key and not that silly touch bar...

What 40mm doesn't vignette on an Iscorama? My 50mm Nikon lenses seem to vignette just a little bit.