>>1745
In short, nope.
Just bumped because i really liked this board, was about to start sending mails to at least achieve it but i found it wasn't deleted so only the 2 week rule seems to be dangerous (taking into account this board can go a month without a post). I'm very wary of posting in this site so i'm not around often.
On the long note, i quitted taking photos some months ago (really just shot for only a year) because my entry-level Canon DSLR got its kit lenses busted up, both cheapo stuff i didn't take care of; The 18-55mm absorbed a forward fall from a tripod that broke suddenly and the focus motor is slowly dying, a have to manually focus and the ring is very finicky so i have to focus using live view and the hard buttons to zoom in. Definitely not going to do candid or any kind of stuff that needs moderate to fast adjustments.
My 70-300mm is another story, i thought it was one of those fancy modern things that could be manually adjusted when in auto focus mode, but it seems i also fucked the shit out of its motor by over-driving the focus ring and now it doesn't do anything at all, so it just a manual telezoom that also has a finicky ring with short range. I can't do anything well because i don't really trust my bad eyesight to manually focus on the go, also ditched all my money on a PC when all this happened so cannot buy anything over a 100, gifted my old point-n-shoot to a friend shortly before... really i'm just lazy to go around with a tripod and focusing with the nail-breaking zoom buttons.
I did start to read and watch tutorials, but mostly i read about software, i always go along with retouching my photos the least i can, one should pull the job on the spot... but i have to confess some post-processing utilities are very interesting to use, currently watching some stuff by that guy Jimmy McIntyre about Lumi32 and Raya Pro, trying to make HDR stuff look elegant instead of a pastiche of colours. I very rarely buy software but Lumi32 looked to me like a very attractive time-saver when exploring badly/desperately done shots in underexposures with shitty sensors like the Canon's. Pirated some Topaz Labs apps and i don't want to sound like a shill but have to say i'm surprised with the results, the DeNoiser works wonders and the Sharpener is very good but it still needs the mandatory border masking to avoid the white phantom lines (not worth a 100 each tho, that's mad). Need to check out the thing you guys use, Darktable, and the Corel one called AfterShot Pro, heard it was pretty fast/doesn't hang around with palsy like Lightroom. Honestly this is all postponing the fact i don't want to process my photos until i get to know most of the names around and controlling at a decent level at least 2 or 3.
Did some reading about hardware, gonna have to save a lot of money. It's all a hobby for me but i'm planning to get a Nikon D500 in the next 3 or 4 years, Sony seems like a monster with its low-ISO performance (really, i like shutter speed over anything) but i absolutely hate the ergonomics, size and the lenses' price range. I think for a hobbyist that D500 is overkill, the D7200 seems great but around those dates i think the 500 can lower the price considerably (plus it's going to take me a long time to save more than 2000 bucks again), but a friend told me the Canon might have shit sensor performance/noise, but Nikon gets tons of noise too when moving the colors in post-process, so i'm going to read some more while saving up. Looking at some filters, the PolarPros have complete and utter meme cunts as sponsors and shills but the variable ND seems too much of a time-saver to ignore, the image might suffer but i think it can be manageable in post-process. X4 CPL seems like the polarizer, Hoya stuff for the UV filter but because i never used those i don't know what to buy, only plan to use them as scratch-insurance but because i will stack over it i don't know which one reaches the level of not disturbing the image quality, and the difference between a HD3 Professional and the normal ones is about 100 bucks. Also meme stuff for the uninitiated, but that 18-"400"mm from Tamron seems like the lazy boy's dream, i know image quality will drop to the ground but i can live with that if it means i will not change the lens often/at all. The 10-24mm seems very inciting too for ultra-wide.
Guess i just wrote everything i wanted to since August. Is the BO planning to stay or move to the webring?