Time to get a camcorder
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@Klaus Overall, okay, fair enough. I see what you're saying here, and yes, sometimes better gear can give you more options with what photos you can even take. But I don't think the gap nearly as much as you're saying it is, and it's closing very quickly with each passing year.
For photos that can be taken with either a phone or a camera, no one can tell the difference. You can now literally take your phone screen, throw it into an enlarger, and make large prints on photogenic paper that have enough detail in them that you can't tell where they came from. There's a high school program here that teaches their students how to do this.
@mark said in Time to get a camcorder:
Right. But let's say you are going to make a 40x50 print to frame and hang on your wall.
I would want the biggest sensor with smallest pixel size and deepest full well capacity, I could afford. Especially for long exposure photographs. Not to mention that if you go much longer than a few seconds you should take a series of dark frames and flat frames to subtract out any "hot" and "cold" pixels and uneven illumination due to the heat generated by the surrounding components on the circuit board. I am of course relating to all of this through my experience with long exposure, and cooled sensors we used in astrophotography. We even liquid cooled our cameras during the summer months. We cool the sensor to reduce "thermal noise".
Yeah, see, astrophotography stuff is a little different. Not only are a lot of the prints ginormous, but they're also made for you to get VERY close to the print and notice the details (in this case, stars and such).
What's seldom talked about is what kind of gear you need for the kind of photography you do. For natural light portraits, street photography and some landscape stuff, gear is not going to help you.
For some landscapes, to Klaus's point, some extra gear like ND filters or gradients can help make the process a lot faster and easier. For indoor portraits with controlled lighting, it's not so much the camera you're buying as the light setup.
For astro, yeah, that's almost an entirely different thing. You need fairly specific stuff to do half of what you might want. (See, Klaus, I concede.
)I would love for you to see my 40x50 prints of M31 and M42 hanging in my living room. They were taken with specialty astronomical cameras. Not very large sensors by modern standards.
Actual resolution of the cameras we used (SBIG ST-10) was only 2184 x 1472 but had 6.8 micron pixels and 77,000 e- Full Well Capacity (77k electrons) which is the point where an individual pixel will saturate and start bleeding or blooming over into the neighboring pixels. Full Well Capacity basically determines dynamic range. If it gets saturated you get blooming. when a star blooms, things get ugly real quick and processing it out of the image is a real pain in the ass.
Also there are CCD sensors and CMOS sensors. CCD sensors (especially monochrome CCDs) are much sharper and have a higher dynamic range than like resolution CMOS sensors or "one shot color" CCD sensors.
Granted we did a 9 panel mosaic for M31 but M42 was a single panel. Both of them scaled up very well.
Anyone who attended the Piano Party I hosted a few years back had ample opportunity to inspect them up close. They are printed on archival Kodak photographic paper on a true optical enlargement printer. A company in Madison had a very expensive (high 5 figures if I remember correctly) machine that printed them for us.
I'd really love to see 'em! I've been looking at some monochrome sensor cameras lately. Not for the dynamic range—I'd actually want less for the kind of stuff I like to do, not more—but for help with low-light situations. Some cameras can be converted to an all-spectrum sensor by removing the visible light filters that sit on top of the sensor, but that's not the same as a CCD sensor.
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 01:20 last edited by@Aqua-Letifer I get it that we are talking about two different worlds here and I concede to your expertise in the "terrestrial realm". I haven't been serious about that since I went to college for it back in the early 80s and I was shooting 35mm/medium format and 4x5. I love black & white photography btw. Ansel was of course, my hero and his work with large format b&w photography is still unsurpassed IMO. He would actually burn and dodge the exposure itself. Crazy shit.
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wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 01:44 last edited by
So, 4K?
Btw I just bought this:
Panasonic 4K Ultra HD Video Camera Camcorder HC-VX981K, 20X Optical Zoom, 1/2.3-Inch BSI Sensor, HDR Capture, Wi-Fi Smartphone Multi Scene Video Capture (Black) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A60SYRE
Figured I can always return it if I’m not satisfied for the first few weeks.
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wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 01:50 last edited by
This thread has been deeply divisive to our community and I suggest we ban this topic going forward. Politics and religion and abortion are fine, but no photography.
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So, 4K?
Btw I just bought this:
Panasonic 4K Ultra HD Video Camera Camcorder HC-VX981K, 20X Optical Zoom, 1/2.3-Inch BSI Sensor, HDR Capture, Wi-Fi Smartphone Multi Scene Video Capture (Black) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A60SYRE
Figured I can always return it if I’m not satisfied for the first few weeks.
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 02:53 last edited by@89th said in Time to get a camcorder:
So, 4K?
Btw I just bought this:
Panasonic 4K Ultra HD Video Camera Camcorder HC-VX981K, 20X Optical Zoom, 1/2.3-Inch BSI Sensor, HDR Capture, Wi-Fi Smartphone Multi Scene Video Capture (Black) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A60SYRE
Figured I can always return it if I’m not satisfied for the first few weeks.
Wow! I bet it will take some awesome videos. Way better than any camcorder I ever owned. lol
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wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 03:13 last edited by
When I get it, I'm going to practice real life usage, such as holding it up and yelling "Now everyone look like they are having fun, ok? WE ARE HAVING FUN, DAMMIT", to see if it causes any impact to the video stabilization feature.
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When I get it, I'm going to practice real life usage, such as holding it up and yelling "Now everyone look like they are having fun, ok? WE ARE HAVING FUN, DAMMIT", to see if it causes any impact to the video stabilization feature.
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This thread has been deeply divisive to our community and I suggest we ban this topic going forward. Politics and religion and abortion are fine, but no photography.
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 05:41 last edited by@Horace said in Time to get a camcorder:
This thread has been deeply divisive to our community and I suggest we ban this topic going forward. Politics and religion and abortion are fine, but no photography.
You think this is bad, stay off of r/photography. Like, forever.
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wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 10:33 last edited by
@mark said in Time to get a camcorder:
@89th You should get a hand held gimble for it. You will take epic home movies.
Funny, that is what Aqua's sister or Jon's sister... someone's sister suggested too. :devilhorns: Yes, I still use the short code from the old TNCR days sometimes.
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@mark said in Time to get a camcorder:
@89th You should get a hand held gimble for it. You will take epic home movies.
Funny, that is what Aqua's sister or Jon's sister... someone's sister suggested too. :devilhorns: Yes, I still use the short code from the old TNCR days sometimes.
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 14:05 last edited by@89th said in Time to get a camcorder:
@mark said in Time to get a camcorder:
@89th You should get a hand held gimble for it. You will take epic home movies.
Funny, that is what Aqua's sister or Jon's sister... someone's sister suggested too. :devilhorns: Yes, I still use the short code from the old TNCR days sometimes.
Having a short devilhorn is nothing to be ashamed of and some women even prefer them.
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wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 14:20 last edited by
Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
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Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 15:08 last edited by@Doctor-Phibes said in Time to get a camcorder:
Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
I'm a terrible asshole about those, too, unfortunately. Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them. -
@Doctor-Phibes said in Time to get a camcorder:
Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
I'm a terrible asshole about those, too, unfortunately. Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 15:59 last edited by@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.
Do you think you have made a difference?
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.
Do you think you have made a difference?
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 16:01 last edited by@Axtremus said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.
Do you think you have made a difference?
Absolutely we did. We had the reader mail and comments sections to prove it.
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@Axtremus said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.
Do you think you have made a difference?
Absolutely we did. We had the reader mail and comments sections to prove it.
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 16:03 last edited by@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Axtremus said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.
Do you think you have made a difference?
Absolutely we did. We had the reader mail and comments sections to prove it.
Wonderful, a belated congratulations on a job well done.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Axtremus said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.
Do you think you have made a difference?
Absolutely we did. We had the reader mail and comments sections to prove it.
Wonderful, a belated congratulations on a job well done.
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 16:04 last edited by@Axtremus said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Axtremus said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.
Do you think you have made a difference?
Absolutely we did. We had the reader mail and comments sections to prove it.
Wonderful, a belated congratulations on a job well done.
Well, we got plenty of hate mail, too.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Time to get a camcorder:
Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
I'm a terrible asshole about those, too, unfortunately. Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 16:14 last edited by@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Time to get a camcorder:
Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
I'm a terrible asshole about those, too, unfortunately. Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.How did that go?
"Too unhealthy to get up the nasty steep hill? - BUY THIS BIKE! It's like exercise, only easier!"
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Time to get a camcorder:
Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
I'm a terrible asshole about those, too, unfortunately. Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.How did that go?
"Too unhealthy to get up the nasty steep hill? - BUY THIS BIKE! It's like exercise, only easier!"
wrote on 25 Mar 2022, 18:26 last edited by@Doctor-Phibes said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Time to get a camcorder:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Time to get a camcorder:
Klaus - ask him about his stupid electric bike.
Go on, you know you want to.
I'm a terrible asshole about those, too, unfortunately. Because it was once my job to educate the masses on them.How did that go?
"Too unhealthy to get up the nasty steep hill? - BUY THIS BIKE! It's like exercise, only easier!"
Nah I mean it was literally my job. We got a power meter, some fitness trackers and tested the bikes for a couple of months. The athlete I worked with has some pretty hardcore Ironman and International 'Cross racing times. They made me do the stuff, too, just to see the difference. She smoked me of course, but there was no difference in terms of what the bikes do for you.