u/Vaugith

Temp inside container should be 68-86°f for germination. I found steady temp best. Seeds should start popping 4 to 12 days after sowing if you did it right, and they should all be done popping 3 weeks after sowing. Once you hit that point I recommend taking them off the heat mats. Keep room temp 68-86°f but heat mats will just dry out the soil quicker at this point. I found the best time to gradually introduce the 20°f temp drop at night would be around when they get uncovered/acclimated to ambient humidity.

$1998 is the MAP mandated from Sony. You might find $100 rebate or something like that but not likely to see any deeper discount from any retailer than that. You can go on adorama or keh today and buy an excellent condition used model for $200-400 less.

Body matters for:

Autofocus

Dynamic range

Iso performance

IBIS

Burst shot speed

Yeah Id say it matters. You can make old gear work, it's especially easy for hobby level photography of still or slow subjects in good light. it can be fun and rewarding. But if you want to consistently tack sharp AF, if you want very high AF hit rate on moving targets, if you want to be able to use slow shutter speeds handheld and have higher ISO not ruin your shots in low light, having a newer body will be a massive advantage.

1 looks oversaturated, 2 looks like the highlights are crushed, 3 looks like the highlights are blown. What are you using to edit? Do you have a histogram to view? Be more subtle with the sliders instead of cranking them.

Well, it doesn't hurt to try to dry it out and see how much it resolves. Airtight with desiccant

I don't buy all that. Feel strongly that the color science stuff that's repeated ad nauseum is all marketing by Fuji, canon, and the other usual suspects. Yes the colors are a little different on each system but they can all easily be made to look like each others colors simply by applying a preset to the raw in post. It's like someone complaining that raw photos look grey - yeah, they do, because it preserves dynamic range. Same with raw colors. Someone who knows what they're doing in post can make an image from any sensor feel any way they want it to. I think when you see flat Sony photos posted it's usually either people who are new to editing or people trying to post unedited raws. Id hate to start an arguent with anyone but I think "Zeiss 3d pop" is bullshit marketing too. Lenses provide different amounts of contrast, different rendering, etc and some absolutely look better than others, Zeiss are for the most part really good, but this can largely also be simulated in post, enough to give the same feel.

And if you want sooc, check out some of the Sony "creative looks" options.

I think they have a really great marketing team. The top street photography yt influencers are using them which drives all of their viewers in that direction. I've never used one but I understand there are some really great alternatives for example canon l39 or Pentax spotomatic that cost a fraction of the price.

Like I told you: the stuff you see is likely on the inside of the lens. This is not something you typically do at home. It would be done at a specialist shop and cost more than the lenses are worth. Even if cleaned off the coating will be damaged. The lenses may still take good photos but the fungus can spread to other equipment and at the very least flaring would be considerably increased.

I would pass on those personally. Fungus eats coatings and those look worse than what I'd tolerate. Typically fungus is on the inside of the lens elements and it may cost more to try cleaning than what the lens is worth. Though if they are extremely cheap I'm sure there are people who would enjoy them and say the distortion gives the images character.

Yes the sigma 18-50mm f2.8 is the top choice for a first lens on e mount aps-c. Just get it. The Tamron is similar, makes a few compromises to get slightly wider and cheaper, I would stick with the sigma.

For a first fast prime I would recommend one of the viltrox f1.7s. They have a 15, 25, 35, 56 in this line. Excellent optically, great value. Shoot with the zoom for a good while to learn what focal length you like the best to help decide which prime focal length to try, but generally the 56 is going to be a top choice for tighter portraiture, the 35 would be close to classic full frame "nifty fifty" and also very good for portraiture with slightly more context, the 25 is closer to full frame 35mm which is a traditional street focal length choice and good for environmental context in portraits, and the 15 is going to be a standard wide angle view.

You might also consider the full frame viltrox 26mm f2.8 which is extremely compact and would give a full frame 39mm fov - an excellent choice for street photography.

Highlight weighted metering mode, shoot in raw, bring up shadows in post

There is no chemical transformation of the alkaloid molecule necessary to make the mescaline active. It's present in the plant in mescaline malate form, which is active - eating the cactus raw is fully active. A salt, similar to mescaline citrate or mescaline fumarate that is produced by Cielo. Mescaline malate is soluble in water. Everything done in making tea, including chopping/ blending/ juicing, freezing, boiling, adding acid, even in the full spectrum extractions like alchohol or vinegar tek are all done to try to speed up the removal of mescaline malate (and the other desirable alkaloids) out of the plant flesh and into the liquid simply by breaking down the plant cell walls, then to try to filter out the leftover undesirable portions of the plant including fats/lipids, cytokines, the flesh itself, etc. None of this is required or necessary, just people using different steps to speed things up. If you wanted to you could literally just chop up the cactus fairly fine, drop it in a bowl of water, put the water in the fridge (for food safety reasons), leave it in there a few days, fish out all the cactus, then reduce the water down and drink it. That would be the bare minimum and easiest method with least complication and would work fine.

While blending, juicing, adding acid can in fact speed up the process, these particular steps also release more unwanted compounds into the liquid that you won't be able to just filter out, so these steps in particular may make the resulting brew more difficult to consume and may increase nausea and body load.

I would look for a composition that wasn't so flat - foreground depth layer would help a lot, for example.

Well it sounds like the clear answer now would be to borrow and try out your hiring photographers lenses since he offered, see what you think. Very generous of him.

Generally 85 & 50 are closer together than most portrait photographers find useful. Think of these as one step apart and typically primes are chosen at two steps apart unless you're ballin. For example you would more commonly see a portrait photographer using a 35mm and an 85mm together, wide for environmental context and 85 for closeups, or a single lens portrait solution using 50mm only, though its also very nice and somewhat common to pair a 50 with a 24mm and/or a 135. But it's all super dependant on your preference, style, how you work with your subjects, etc.

Nothing is stopping you from trading in your 85 f1.8 . The 85mm f1.4 GMII is considered one of the very top image quality lenses and community favorite single portrait lens on e mount. 50 f1.2 GM and f1.4 GM are also amazing though. Any of the GMs will be a huge step up in rendering and image quality from your 85 f1.8 and I bet you will never pick your current 85 up again once you have one of those.

So yeah try out what you have available to you and see what you think on the focal length. I think you can't go wrong when choosing between 85 gmII and one of the two 50mm GMs.

You think you only check your phone 20 times a day? Lol

What is the AF area setting set to?

I use helicon focus to focus stack groups of 100 raw files, 61MP each, on a windows machine with 32GB RAM. It works really quickly and it's a lot of fun to watch it build the stack.

I think if you want to do this professionally you should raise your budget. If you want to ask to be paid I would recommend a full frame body with dual card slots, cards of course, at least a couple lenses, a flash, stand, softbox, trigger.

Typical workhorse of a portrait shooter in full frame would be a 50 f1.4/f1.2 and/or an 85 f1.4/f1.2. For weddings you would most commonly see a single shooter operating with a two body setup, one glued to a 24-70 f2.8 and the other 70-200 f2.8, switching to the aforementioned portrait lens at the dedicated time set aside for portraits. At least one of these 3 or 4 should have a good close focusing distance for ring shots.

At least one light stand with a decently sized to large softbox/octabox/umbrella and a flash powerful enough to light it up outside (300-400ws) and a compatable trigger.

Thanks for that

We are both talking about the version of the tek at the link I provided there right? Wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Cielo ?

The entire wiki.dmt-nexus.me domain is not accessable to me, and others, for the last few days. That was the version of the tek I was using, is that correct? Searching tells me the wiki. domain is outdated, not maintained, and failing. Wiki domain is giving a "http 500 error" which indicates a server side issue - some kind of site hosting server breakdown or crash. The www.dmt-nexus.me domain is also giving me errors right now that say something about server side connection interrupted. The forum.dmt-nexus.me domain is working fine.

Oh, the not taking it with you factor is a thing for sure. I'm not taking a 24-70 f2.8 with me in my backpack to and from work every day or just out to the market on the weekend. I will absolutely do that with a significantly smaller lens like the 40 G. A lens the size of a 24-70 f2.8 is reserved for when I'm going somewhere that I specifically want to take photos of and I don't mind if people notice me taking photos or where taking photos is normal and expected.

I don't consider it unweildly, though others may. I'm fine with the weight, ergos, balance, size. I've just noticed it is above the size threshold where people notice your camera, want to stop you to talk about it, feel self conscious of you point the camera at them, have so I have some issues with candid photography. I don't have any of these issues when using a smaller lens.

It's fine. What in particular are you wanting to know about it?

Yes, into a suitably sized pot, and filter out organic chunks and add more porous inorganic while you do.