u/Vaugith

The photography space is absolutely saturated with marketing that is extremely good at telling you the answer to your problems is buying the next new expensive product. It's extremely convincing and we have a name for it - GAS or gear acquisition syndrome. As much as it may hit a dopamine lever to make that purchase and open that brand new product, it turns the hobby into always about aquiring and not about using or the actual photos. Then as soon as you use it once The dopamine fades, the product sits, and you start pining for the next product and dopamine hit. The truth that people deep in GAS don't want to admit is that fantastic photos can be taken with something as simple as your smart phone that you have with you every day. High end camera bodies can do some miraculous things, but for many types of images are not a requirement at all. Study lighting, composition, color theory, how to tell stories through your images, study the works of the great photographers that came before. Consider the equipment they were using to produce the images you see from them - your phone is significantly more capable. Give the marketing that tells you photography is not worth pursuing without the latest things no space in your thoughts and recognize it for what it is - a desperate attempt to get your money.

Yes, having a camera as a hobbiest can absolutely encourage you to get out of the house and go explore new places, attend events, and meet new people that you other wise wouldn't. Much more than just taking photos with a smart phone, even if using a very old camera where image quality may be similar or worse. I do love having a physical camera body. It transforms the experience and headspace while taking photos.

So how do we find balance between these two competing concepts as a hobbiest? Well first, please be financially responsible. Payment plans are not. Save up your money, set a budget, consider portions of your income going into wants vs needs vs long term savings. When you know how much you can responsibly spend on a camera, we can help you decide from there. There are great options that can be had much cheaper than the latest & greatest or even much cheaper than something like a used a7iv. There is older gear that was built to last a lifetime and needs a new home. There are reputable sites that thoroughly inspect and grade used gear which can be purchased for very affordable prices. APS-C makes a lot of sense for a hobbiest on a budget. Realistically you do not need a top of the line camera. Check out the fantastic photos posted to some of these photography subs by people using quite old gear every day. As a hobbiest you can achieve great photos and have a lot of fulfillment out of even a quite old all manual camera. And if you take care of it, if you decide to upgrade at a later date you can easily pass it on to the next person and make some of your money back.

35mm on aps-c is full frame 50mm equivalent field of view, you understand that correct?

Imo the a6700 is worth it for the batteries, stabilization, and better AF. The Sony 35 f1.8 oss is very old and not good by today's standards. If you want 35mm look at the viltrox 35mm f1.7

Dont be afraid to shop used from one of the trusted resellers that tests the cameras before selling them to you - check mpb, adorama, keh

If you taste a piece of cactus and it is still bitter, it still has mescaline in it. Multiple pulls can speed things up as the water gets higher saturation of alkaloid it will slow extraction, but not strictly required. Just make sure you don't boil all the water off - you pretty much have to watch it the entire time. Probably 6 to 12 hours.

Misplant has them in stock.

It's meant in context of removing the head of the cactus though 🙄

The limited existing evidence says South American cultures utilized ritual human sacrifice on a small scale to appease gods and improve agrecultural fertility when natural disasters, drought, etc threatened. Talking about 0.01% of local population sacrificed per year, with a single recorded event of over 100 people due to an extreme weather event causing crisis in their society. They used mainly trichos and aya. The evidence we have from pottery and carvings indicate short spined varieties were used to calm the victims and bring them to a state of harmony and peace. Long spined varieties are seen as spiritual weapons and used to defend against spiritual attack - not what they would want to be feeding human sacrifice victims. That blurb about the "trophy heads" is what some explorer named them, not what the ancient cultures thought of them or why they preserved them.

On the other hand in Aztec culture in what is now Mexico they were sacrificing 1% or more of their entire population per year - 10k-20k sacrifices per year on average, with a single record event reaching over 20k. Years and years of wars were fought simply to capture people for more sacrifices. The sacrifices were done because the sun runs on human blood, and the citizens must remain in a state of fear to be more easily governed. They also happened at times of culture wide famine and the victims were eaten. They did not use trichos but they did use some lophs, but mostly psilocybin.

Both North and South American cultures that used psychedelics were not primarily using them for sacrifice ceremonies. Using psyches was commonplace, a generally positive thing that they used to heal, divine, theripize, etc, and it just was also included in these dark sacrificial ceremonies as well. Psyches were a tool to commune with the divine, and sacrifices were to the divine.

Overall the North American Aztec culture is by far the darkest most horrific example. The south American culture sacrifices were certainly dark, sad, misguided, but overall committed in a much more positive headspace and intention and were minimized rather than maximized.

I would not advise a6500 - using a crop sensor with one card slot is not professional during paid work. It would be better to get an older body with dual card slots and a full frame sensor. The drawbacks will be AF speed, low light noise performance, ibis, these are not important for portraiture. But when you do decide on that, consider which lens ecosystem you are buying into for future expansion. If you aquire a few nice lenses that work for portraiture but later want to upgrade the body to something with better AF for moving subjects, you want to be able to use the same lenses.

Generally find that adding undecomposed organic matter to the mix is a bad idea. Causes large nitrogen level fluctuations, increases activity of decomposers including fungus, pests, and bacteria, all of which can also end up attacking healthy cactus. I think you'd do a lot better by sun fermenting and using the feed water. Also attracts larger animals than mice and rodents - racoons love to dig through pots recently treated with fish and kelp, and my family has had a badass cat maimed by a large raccoon. Good luck

Don't blend it. Chop finely. So that you can filter.

Boiling it does smell strongly like boiling vegetables.

You want to keep the tea and plant material above 140°f or below 40°f for food safety reasons. Prevent mold and/or bacteria growth.

I don't think you will have a good time taking it in your room. Going on a day long hike out in nature with a trusted friend would be a much better choice.

You might want to consider some of the cold soak full spectrum extractions instead of tea, based on your concerns. Chop the cactus up pretty finely without mushing it at all using a sharp knife. Then put the cactus either into water and into the fridge, or into a large pot/container of vinegar or cheap vodka and let soak at room temp. Soak for 2-3 days. Then filter out the solids and reduce the liquid. First boil it down until it starts to get thick, then you'll want to either use a double boiler method, a cracked open oven on very low, or a food dehydrator to dry it into the resin. This step will smell strongly. The only way to avoid that would be to drink the liquid without fully evaporating down to resin - if you want to do this I would strongly advise using water instead of alchohol or vinegar.

The newer lenses are miles better in almost all metrics. You can get second hand e mount third party lenses for nearly any use case quite affordably that would vastly outperform any a mount options.

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.