u/Vaugith

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. 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 comolication 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.

I think Samyang (aka Rokinon) is the only one making an 85 for aps-c - affordable and good but manual. If you are willing to consider aps-c 75mm or 90mm there are options - The viltrox 75mm f1.8 Evo would likely be the pick of the bunch value wise but Sirui and Viltrox also make wider 75s and Viltrox has the 90 f2.2 Evo.

Moving to full frame 85mm options, it's hard to advise you without a budget because there are a lot of options and multiple offerings from each manufacturer that vary in age and therefore quality. Sigma makes some 85 1.4s that rival the Sony GMII. Samyang and meikes 1.4s are really good. In the f1.8 category which are smaller and may make more sense for an aps-c sized body, there are at least 11 different brands offering options all of which are high quality and good, but with varying tradeoffs, but I think the viltrox 85mm f2 EVO would be a leader in terms of value and image quality.

This was asked yesterday and I laid out a pretty well encompassing answer. Scrolling, browsing, searching a little bit before asking is greatly appreciated.

Mostly copy/pasted from that post with modifications for you specifically:

You would dose tea or any other full spectrum extraction based on how much cactus you used in the preparation. Trichocereus cacti can range in potency from about 0.01% mescaline per dried weight to over 5%. Thats a potency range of over 500 times. No one can tell you how potent your marketplace cactus is unless you start from a named known tested cultivar. We can tell you a species average, but if you decide to go with that number you need to prepared to either feel nothing or to blast off. You could ask the person you are getting the cactus from how much to use for one dose if they are psychedelically inclined and open to this discussion, which is likely the easiest way to get the best answer.

Of course we always recommend purchasing known named tested cultivars off of our test results list from r/sanpedrocactusforsale

https://www.reddit.com/r/mescaline/comments/1qqhibs/pdf_of_118_cultivars_ranked_by_potency_using_166/?share_id=mcqU0guBmxgwXFX1bv-Ee&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

This list is based on mescaline citrate per dried weight. In my experience fresh to dry weight ratio is most commonly 5% to 10%.

Eating it raw, blending into a smoothie, any other method where you consume the actual plant material will absolutely give you full effects but also packs the most nausea and body load. There is also some concern about consuming oxalate crystals and potential stone effects.

All further preparation methods are focused on reducing the amount of nasty stuff you have to eat, reducing the body load and nausea by reducing plant material, lipids, and unwanted alkaloids, and accurate dosing only in the case for extractions that have a pure mescaline salt as the end product - Cielo or a/b ONLY.

The most basic preparation is tea. Basically you boil the cactus material for hours until it loses its taste and turns white, then you filter it out. That is all that has to happen, but there are additional optional steps that can be taken that can speed the extraction like freezing or acidifying with lemon or vinegar. Finally the liquid is reduced via boiling down to a small, easier to ingest volume.

The next category of extractions are full spectrum extracts. These minimize the volume and unwanted plant compounds in a low effort way but include most/all of the desirable plant alkaloids, which many people find give a slightly better experience than pure mescaline salts alone. In short, you can put your cactus into water and let it rest in the fridge a few days, or room temp cheap vodka or vinegar. Then you filter out the soilds, reduce, and evaporate the liquid with a food dehydrator or oven on low with the door open and a fan blowing inside, and are left with an extremely sticky and vile resin.

For most accurate dosing with more effort involved, you can do an extraction to a pure mescaline salt, which can be dosed precisely, but requires you to make some equipment and reagent purchases and requires following exact instructions to the letter. If you want to try your hand at a full extraction to mescaline salts, check the full process over here:

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/CIELO

Note this link is currently down, check back soon.

If you would like help growing cactus just let me know, I have a guide prepared for that. We also have guides for tea and some of the full spectrum preparations.

For me its culling. The lightroom AI assisted culling features are not good enough for me to rely on them yet. I bet they will be better soon.

I dont typically recommend soaps on cacti if it can be avoided but as a last resort here it may be necessary. Strips away the skins protective coatings.

Depending on the type of scale and where you are located, Imidacloprid may be a solution. Its highly effective on soft scale, though not effective on armored scale, and is restricted in certain states such as CA.

Sometimes, minimalistic text can add value. Its probably too much if its more than a sentence or two in addition to a line about specs such as location, gear, people. But how you present your photos, including the descriptions, can be part of your creative expression. So you dont have to follow rules.

Before you get a sensor cleaning kit first try to use an air blower, then your cameras sensor cleaning function (if it has one) which will vibrate the sensor to try to knock dust loose. If that fails, you can youtube how to use a sensor cleaning kit. Essentially you power up the camera and put it into sensor cleaning mode, put like two drops of fluid on the swab, use one clean swiping motion to swipe the entire sensor, optionally flip the swab and do it again. That should take care of it. I use VSGO swabs (choose the right ones for your sensor size) and eclipse sensor cleaning solution personally and they work but that doesnt mean other brands wont work just as well.

I did not say you could not practice and improve photography without an evf. I said I recommend using an evf to practice and improve photography. These are different statements. If you don't understand how or why an evf would help someone improve their photography over just using a display screen, then I recommend you try using one too.

No, you misunderstand me. I was saying to use only the 26 or only the 40 all day. With the a7crs cropping ability and the high iq of the lens, it's extremely doable. I regularly carry only the 40 alone during a day walking around the city. Some people are very hesitant to jump into using primes in this way, I would encourage you to try it out, but I recognize that I probably won't change your mind.

I have the Sony 24-70 f2.8 GMII. The Sigma 24-70 f2.8 DG DN II art is better in certain ways, worse in other ways, overall similar quality. I have no issue with focal length range, aperture range, packing size, or carrying weight /ergos using the GMII as the single lens I bring for an extended trip or for a single day out. The issue I have with it is the large lens makes taking candid photos and going unnoticed difficult. Even when taking photos of friends and family - people seem to get self conscious around a large lens. So what I tend to do is lean into the dumb tourist stereotype. Just a guy taking your photo with a large lens may be intimidating, but a tourist, in a location where tourists are expected, taking a photo of anything, with any camera, is normal and expected, so people don't even notice.

Well relatively, sure, I mean we are talking about the difference between an inch of vertical growth per column taking a week vs a week and a half. It can be hard to notice on a large plant. But kelp does contain a lot of auxins and that does do something if properly absorbed

Not what you are asking, but I think the Sony 40mm f2.5 G and the Viltrox 26mm f2.8 are worth having for the a7cr. They can be a single lens solution depending on your preference for wide vs a little more standard view, especially when paired with a custom button set to crop mode.

Personally, when I travel I just bite the bullet on size and take the 24-70 f2.8 though.

I dont think the rooting benefits are very pronounced, especially when discussing foliar application. I mostly see its effects manifest as increased pupping.

If you want to see maximum results from foliar application, you need to make sure the solution is still wet on the skin at 1amish when the pores fully open. Foliar spray at 7pm that dries by 10pm wont do a damn thing. Mixing a surfactant such as cocowet helps more evenly distribute it, and mixing in a small amount of humic/fulvic acids can really boost effects though may cause permanant dark staining to skin and may melt blue farina.