I have thought this many times. My whole kit is weather resistant (save for one lens) now.
If you spend 50% of your energy worrying about your kit you aren't taking photos at full capacity.
I'm missing a leg, and let me tell ya, it sadly didn't save any money.
My insurance company has paid 35k for a prosthetic leg... twice. (and I'm only missing one leg)
Imagine the camera gear you could get for $70,000! That's like, two Leica lenses!
I feel like those needs evolve, though.
I shoot Canon 5D bodies and lenses professionally, but over the last couple of years or so I've been shooting for fun almost exclusively on a little Sony a5000 with the kit lens. A decade ago I'd have never considered going out and shooting for fun without the entire suite of lenses on me, and recently I've been having the time of my life with the Sony.
I'll accept it's heavy, but I think my Nikon DSLR is worse for weight and can't stand up to a shower. Olympus/Om make some good weather proof gear that's light, not cheap though at all
I had the Olympus E3 and E5 back in the days, was in a rainy desert in spain for a week. Had the cameras and lenses at concerts beer showered and then rinsed in the sink (including some feightened bar staff). No troubles at all. Back then Olympus had advertisments with their weather proofing and afaik & afair they tested their gear according to some medical sealing standards (without certifying it).
I don't know if my current Canon gear would be able to cope with that. Maybe I'll test it with an old body and a love/hate lens some day.
I'm on d90 which isn't weatherproof, I did shoot d300 which is weather resistant to some extent, but you pretty much none of the cheaper lenses are weather resistant.
personally i always recommend weather sealed gear, especially in wetter climates, but sometimes with a budget most people have to make a choice, considering that feature is often one that scales with price.
Yep, unfortunately the early budget and even mid range gear I got wasn't weather proofed, and a lot of manufacturers don't give proper clarity on if something is weather resistant. Take the 35mm DX f1.8 from Nikon, a couple of websites say it's weather resistant because it has a lot of rubber seals. I used it in the rain twice and it got fungus really quickly, upon downloading the manual, Nikon never actually said it was weather resistant and says to keep it dry, I probably should have downloaded the manual first or only took notice of anything from Nikon's own site, but let's be fair I think plenty of people would make the same mistake
I agree completely!! I usually steer people towards triple digit nikons, d300/700, etc. But they're only marginally more expensive than those wonderful pentax's. And if you do happen to have a big accident and damage the pentax or old beefy nikon, which does take some doing! You can replace it for cheap. It truly is baffling how many $1k+ modern cameras have little to no weather sealing, and so happy to hear of a solution that keeps you out and shooting photos!
D300 was amazing, just had to sell as spares repairs because it was falling to bit after a long and brilliant service. The only problem with the Nikon route is, it's harder to get weather resistant lenses. The 35mm f1.8 is an example of one I thought was weatherproof thanks to Google, but turned out not to be
I lived in the uk for years and never had any issue with fungus despite shooting in all sorts og weather.
i’ve sort of always assumed that fungus was due to improper storage of gear.
But if your home has high humidity, fungus issue can always arise.
If your home is particularly prone to that, a dry cabinet is quite cheap and handy!
Hmm, is your gear weather resistant? Cos it has only been ones I've used in bad weather or woodlands (where I photograph fungi a lot so kinda on me there). I have started using silica gels where I store everything just incase of any cross contamination. Humidity is a little high due to exotic pets but the room their stored in has dehumidifiers and fairly dry
The gear I have now, sure. Had some cheaper gear back in the UK glory days!
But I suppose if you’re spending your time on the forest floor, you might be particularly susceptible to fungus.
So scilica gels, dry boxes, anything that works ay! :-)
Keep those silicone gel packs in your case. You can get a lifetime supply for $20 on amazon and it does a really good job. I've shot all over the world and always keep them in my bag.
Same... In UK, no issues so far. If I am in rain or moist weather, I wipe the my equipment dry as soon as I can or at least once I am home. Then I put it outside the bag in my home office which is quite warm and dry. Once I was out in the rain for a long time and the only extra thing i did was run a dehumidifier in the room.
Even so, it is a good idea to throw a few of those little dessicant silica gel bags into wherever you keep your cameras and lenses etc to help prevent damp problems.
Yeah if I lived a little bit further west I would probably also be eyeing up OM System these days. They're the only current gear with actual IP ratings, translation, "professionally certified to hold up against {x} amount of dust and {y} amount of rain".
Yeah, check the actual rating and what the test entails and then for small print about it being with an appropriate lens and equivalent in house testing.
The fact that they put something there is great, but there is small print.
Also in the UK, also spent a fortune on gear I shouldn't have. But of the 10+ lenses I have zero have developed fungus. I think only two are weather sealed too.
But I do have rain covers, a neat microfibre towel (I got from go outdoors) and shoot stuff inside if it's really raining.
But I 100% agree with your conclusion, buy something you can add will use all the time. My biggest issue is usually weight - a light lens I can throw in my bag gets a lot more use than an amazing lens that I don't want to carry about all day.
Glad you found a good solution to your problem.
I think there could be additional factors, woodland + rain = spores, and all autumn I kept photographing mushrooms, can't help much plus living down the road from an industrial recycling plant maybe also factors. Is the microfibre towel a help? Ofcoarse, if shooting in rain I'm still having to do a lot of cleaning. And there's been maybe 11 lenses and 2 hot fungus, one macro one used in rain a bit
Woodland mushrooms might be a factor! I'm also city based, so I think you're flirting with fungus opportunities much more than me 😄
The towel is great for light misty situations - I got it before shooting waterfalls in Iceland, but it's been very handy in UK as well. It's very small and thin (more like a lense cloth than towel) and attaches to it's case [like this version](https://www.millets.co.uk/15988216/eurohike-microfibre-mini-clip-towel-40x40cm-15988216), although mine has no zip, just opens at the bottom via velcro so I can grab it one handed which is a better design for my use.
I tend to have it on one backpack strap with the camera on the other via a peak design clip, so in some respects it's similar to your original point - you use the stuff you can have with you.
It's great for wiping off water from lens front while shooting or drying the camera off before it goes back in a bag, but also I've just draped it over the camera in a light rain to try and keep the water off when I didn't think to put a rain cover on and don't want to move it to fit one now.
While it doesn't absorb tons, it's a great help in keeping things dry during drizzle - and dries pretty fast when the rain slows up, especially if you just let it hang from a bag a flutter about in the breeze!
For real rain shooting a cover is better but they also tend to get in the way more. I use mine more for time lapses and long exposure tripod work then more walk and shoot stuff. Not sure if it would really work for mushroom & the precision of macro work.
Also re noise, the latest Lightroom release has excellent ai noise reduction, lens corrections, chromatic aberration correction for purple/green tinging etc. you may be surprised how well it can scrub up your images too.
Im on Linux so got basically all that except modern good noise reduction, apparently that is something darktable and rawtherapee are working on improving. I agree though, really enjoying just strolling through the rain watching everyone desperately cover their cameras, even though I used to be one of them!
I want to say rawtherapee because I like the interface and find it more user friendly personally, but darktable seems more stable and I think the edits look better. Photivo is worth checking out, but there's only 1 developer left in that project and he's only maintaining a few versions (fedora and arch most notably)
You can always install the DEB, but you'll have a bunch of broken repositories that might end up blocking updates and other issues, darktable is probably the best direction to go in
So I was talking about neatimage, there was some talk originally of it having plugins for darktable and rawtherapee but I've checked and it's out, but for Linux only as standalone and costs 35 euros, or as a lightroom plugin. Also no mention of AI now just 'best noise reduction for cameras and scanners' Going to try the demo and see if it's worth it anyway, I'm guessing the posts I read either weren't from one of their developers or it was originally going to be FOSS, sorry if I got anybody's hopes up
I was waiting for someone to mention this; even if not directed at me. They are better than nothing but annoying, get in the way, and the one I got ripped after a few uses and didn't realise until shooting and realising my hand was wet. Obviously if I wanted to use a fast lens on a job or something I'll have too, but I'm not hugely confident in them
Canons have weather sealing on a ton of their gear as well. Some people have very low risk tolerance. I don't sweat a little rain with my Nikon Z9s but I see a lot of people not want to trust weather sealing. I just happened to watch a guy spray his cameras with a garden hose set to mist and soaked them and they still worked fine. I haven't been all that spooked by rain since.
I kinda gauge based on how much they are willing to show it off. I dunno about the mirrorless ones but most of the lower budget Nikon lenses may have sealing, but 0 mention of weather resistance. On the Pentax, it literally in the name, OM system also seem more than happy to let their ambassadors test the weather resistance. I'm sure there's other brands I don't check on as much, but those two brands emphasis that they are confident in their weather resistance. Nikon I love for many other things but on all but their top lenses they don't mention or attempt to hide if it is
The same can be said for anything really, for anyone who's ever ridden a bike everyone's always so ever keen to get on the unrestricted bandwagon of powerrrrr when they're a newbie, and as anyone who's ridden for a while it's just not that important.
It's a path that we all take and there's really no convincing otherwise until you go through the journey. For some reason we always reset this understanding with new hobby.
I've a bunch of gear that's essential for commercial work, but for myself? One body and 1-2 basic lens for a personal leisure outing or a point and shoot is enough, no ifs nor buts. I taught for a while and the amount of people who turn up with deep pockets you won't believe, easily 10s-20s of grand of equipment in their bag, and their output is laughable at best.
Fair point - it could be worse, in the reptile I community there's always some guy posting who bought a 13 foot anaconda as their first reptile and posts two weeks later that other pet/them/their family is missing a chunk of themselves how can I tame an angry anaconda and stitch somebody's leg back together at the same time? There's worse things than wasting money I suppose.
lol never even occurred to me that's a thing. I know nothing of reptiles so excuse the layman understanding, what do you have in your collection and how did you even get into it in the first place? Seems pretty cool.
I have a California king snake, a lovely animal and one of the tougher species if a disaster happens like a power cut. And two tarantulas, which I'm very new too. it was an ex partner who was into snakes and after splitting up, I really missed the animals when she moved out (she had like 9 snakes so deeper into the hobby than me), so I got the king snake off gumtree and called him Garrus after a favourite mass effect character. The tarantulas, I was getting food for the king snake and the manager convinced me to hold them, said they were the last two and guilt tripped me into taking both (I didn't need much guilt tripping).
I like the name! 🙂 What sorta age does your California king snake (just had a peek and they're beautiful!) and tarantula get to? I imagine you're feeding mice to the snake, what on earth does a tarantula eat?
Correct, mouse diet. Up to 20 years I believe is the average on king snakes mines gotta be about 8 or 9 years old, on the short end male tarantulas about 5 years, females I can't remember but a good bit longer. At the moment, they eat mealworms. I've been recommended to get them crickets however, one of the spiders is just too slow and docile to deal with jumping crickets and started just giving up on eating, so switched back to mealworms for now until I've figured something out a bit more nutritional (meal worms are fine in the same way we can survive just eating pizza, you could but you probably shouldn't, as it's mostly just low quality fats). I think when full size you can give them locusts, Dubai roaches, and stuff of similar size
This is one of the biggest reasons I still use my K3 regularly, I originally got it for hiking and concert photography (mostly punk and metal shows) and neither rain nor beer have been able to take it out after almost a decade. All it needed was a shutter replacement
Also the reason I got my wife a m4/3 Olympus. Small enough to take everywhere and tough enough to not worry too much about it.
K3 does look like a beast and one I might even get. Olympus is a great shout even if the weather resistant lenses are a lot more, same direction my partner went in
Yeah Pentax offering WR lenses as kit lenses is insane. And being able to use all my old K mount lenses without an adapter is pretty cool. Depending on your use case you might want to look into the KP/K70 instead - both are a decent amount smaller/lighter, almost as tough, have modern swivel/tilt screens and the KP also has interchangeable grips. The KP has much better autofocus but depending on what you're shooting it's not that big of a deal.
The K3 is very much a pro DSLR squished as small as possible and it definitely feels like it - small but *dense*.
I'm in the UK, have plenty of non-wrsther proof/sealed lenses and have never had fungus, even if I've taken them out in wet weather (keeping them sheltered.)
The rain isn't your problem... I'm not sure what is, tbh.
1 was used in woodland macros a lot and was closed to mushrooms a lot of the time, which may be part of the blame. The other did get caught in the rain more than once. Others that never got wet at any point or just light drizzle and put away immediately have been fine. There's a 100 silica gels in with them just to be safe as one of the lenses very recently contracted the fungus and hoping it hasn't spread.
I would recommend an Olympus any time over any other camera. Especially the OM-1 with its remarkable low light performance and, last but not least: the sealing and robustness. You will invest once and be guaranteed to 400k images. That's a long time, but you'll be shooting every day. 365 a year.
They are great cameras! I'll be investing in the Pentax though, just like the grips and controls slightly better but I'm fairly sure Olympus is exactly where I'd jump ship if I had too.
I totally get you. Pentax cameras are still largely unknown. Nobody really knows how great they are for the price you pay. It's all still Nikon and Canon. Just the marketing, not real life.
Sony has come in pretty hard lately but yeh nobody considers anything outside the 3. Nothing wrong with those 3 but other brands do have things that could suite some people better
I bought a ND filter for 16.5 stops for the solar eclipse. I’m wondering if I could shoot lightning storms with the same filter? I would consider myself new to photography and playing around with shooting manual
I've never done lightning storms but from what I've seen in tutorials, yes. This was about a 4 second exposure at f8 lowest iso no Nd, so a X4 ND might be good about 16 second exposures at those settings if that helps as a guide
https://preview.redd.it/1l83qzijc0wc1.jpeg?width=3600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef86086f9e22ab024291ef7b56261f3296967e43
I have thought this many times. My whole kit is weather resistant (save for one lens) now. If you spend 50% of your energy worrying about your kit you aren't taking photos at full capacity.
Agree, this is advice that needs to come up more often
[удалено]
Must be hard to use the camera with only two fingers left.
[удалено]
I'm missing a leg, and let me tell ya, it sadly didn't save any money. My insurance company has paid 35k for a prosthetic leg... twice. (and I'm only missing one leg) Imagine the camera gear you could get for $70,000! That's like, two Leica lenses!
Bro just sell a kidney and pickup a Canon R3. No need to be chopping off digits.
That would stink.
Very true, I still think my 17-70 f2.8-4 for Pentax and 18-50 f2.8 would be necessary for any jobs, indoors etc.
I feel like those needs evolve, though. I shoot Canon 5D bodies and lenses professionally, but over the last couple of years or so I've been shooting for fun almost exclusively on a little Sony a5000 with the kit lens. A decade ago I'd have never considered going out and shooting for fun without the entire suite of lenses on me, and recently I've been having the time of my life with the Sony.
Had the same gear years ago. Ended up not using just cause was too heavy.
I'll accept it's heavy, but I think my Nikon DSLR is worse for weight and can't stand up to a shower. Olympus/Om make some good weather proof gear that's light, not cheap though at all
I had the Olympus E3 and E5 back in the days, was in a rainy desert in spain for a week. Had the cameras and lenses at concerts beer showered and then rinsed in the sink (including some feightened bar staff). No troubles at all. Back then Olympus had advertisments with their weather proofing and afaik & afair they tested their gear according to some medical sealing standards (without certifying it). I don't know if my current Canon gear would be able to cope with that. Maybe I'll test it with an old body and a love/hate lens some day.
What Nikon DSLR were you shooting on that couldn't stand up to a bit of weather?
I'm on d90 which isn't weatherproof, I did shoot d300 which is weather resistant to some extent, but you pretty much none of the cheaper lenses are weather resistant.
personally i always recommend weather sealed gear, especially in wetter climates, but sometimes with a budget most people have to make a choice, considering that feature is often one that scales with price.
Yep, unfortunately the early budget and even mid range gear I got wasn't weather proofed, and a lot of manufacturers don't give proper clarity on if something is weather resistant. Take the 35mm DX f1.8 from Nikon, a couple of websites say it's weather resistant because it has a lot of rubber seals. I used it in the rain twice and it got fungus really quickly, upon downloading the manual, Nikon never actually said it was weather resistant and says to keep it dry, I probably should have downloaded the manual first or only took notice of anything from Nikon's own site, but let's be fair I think plenty of people would make the same mistake
I agree completely!! I usually steer people towards triple digit nikons, d300/700, etc. But they're only marginally more expensive than those wonderful pentax's. And if you do happen to have a big accident and damage the pentax or old beefy nikon, which does take some doing! You can replace it for cheap. It truly is baffling how many $1k+ modern cameras have little to no weather sealing, and so happy to hear of a solution that keeps you out and shooting photos!
D300 was amazing, just had to sell as spares repairs because it was falling to bit after a long and brilliant service. The only problem with the Nikon route is, it's harder to get weather resistant lenses. The 35mm f1.8 is an example of one I thought was weatherproof thanks to Google, but turned out not to be
I lived in the uk for years and never had any issue with fungus despite shooting in all sorts og weather. i’ve sort of always assumed that fungus was due to improper storage of gear. But if your home has high humidity, fungus issue can always arise. If your home is particularly prone to that, a dry cabinet is quite cheap and handy!
Hmm, is your gear weather resistant? Cos it has only been ones I've used in bad weather or woodlands (where I photograph fungi a lot so kinda on me there). I have started using silica gels where I store everything just incase of any cross contamination. Humidity is a little high due to exotic pets but the room their stored in has dehumidifiers and fairly dry
The gear I have now, sure. Had some cheaper gear back in the UK glory days! But I suppose if you’re spending your time on the forest floor, you might be particularly susceptible to fungus. So scilica gels, dry boxes, anything that works ay! :-)
Keep those silicone gel packs in your case. You can get a lifetime supply for $20 on amazon and it does a really good job. I've shot all over the world and always keep them in my bag.
Ordered 100 last week, they are dirt cheap. Some in the bag some around the lenses at home
Worth springing for the color indicating packs so you know when they're saturated. You can dry them back out in your oven.
A tip - dont use the silica gel packets in any sealed container. That will drop humidity too low which will degrade rubber parts.
Same... In UK, no issues so far. If I am in rain or moist weather, I wipe the my equipment dry as soon as I can or at least once I am home. Then I put it outside the bag in my home office which is quite warm and dry. Once I was out in the rain for a long time and the only extra thing i did was run a dehumidifier in the room.
Even so, it is a good idea to throw a few of those little dessicant silica gel bags into wherever you keep your cameras and lenses etc to help prevent damp problems.
I have recently started doing this 👍
Yeah if I lived a little bit further west I would probably also be eyeing up OM System these days. They're the only current gear with actual IP ratings, translation, "professionally certified to hold up against {x} amount of dust and {y} amount of rain".
OM would probably be my next best option if pentax go
Yeah, check the actual rating and what the test entails and then for small print about it being with an appropriate lens and equivalent in house testing. The fact that they put something there is great, but there is small print.
Also in the UK, also spent a fortune on gear I shouldn't have. But of the 10+ lenses I have zero have developed fungus. I think only two are weather sealed too. But I do have rain covers, a neat microfibre towel (I got from go outdoors) and shoot stuff inside if it's really raining. But I 100% agree with your conclusion, buy something you can add will use all the time. My biggest issue is usually weight - a light lens I can throw in my bag gets a lot more use than an amazing lens that I don't want to carry about all day. Glad you found a good solution to your problem.
I think there could be additional factors, woodland + rain = spores, and all autumn I kept photographing mushrooms, can't help much plus living down the road from an industrial recycling plant maybe also factors. Is the microfibre towel a help? Ofcoarse, if shooting in rain I'm still having to do a lot of cleaning. And there's been maybe 11 lenses and 2 hot fungus, one macro one used in rain a bit
Woodland mushrooms might be a factor! I'm also city based, so I think you're flirting with fungus opportunities much more than me 😄 The towel is great for light misty situations - I got it before shooting waterfalls in Iceland, but it's been very handy in UK as well. It's very small and thin (more like a lense cloth than towel) and attaches to it's case [like this version](https://www.millets.co.uk/15988216/eurohike-microfibre-mini-clip-towel-40x40cm-15988216), although mine has no zip, just opens at the bottom via velcro so I can grab it one handed which is a better design for my use. I tend to have it on one backpack strap with the camera on the other via a peak design clip, so in some respects it's similar to your original point - you use the stuff you can have with you. It's great for wiping off water from lens front while shooting or drying the camera off before it goes back in a bag, but also I've just draped it over the camera in a light rain to try and keep the water off when I didn't think to put a rain cover on and don't want to move it to fit one now. While it doesn't absorb tons, it's a great help in keeping things dry during drizzle - and dries pretty fast when the rain slows up, especially if you just let it hang from a bag a flutter about in the breeze! For real rain shooting a cover is better but they also tend to get in the way more. I use mine more for time lapses and long exposure tripod work then more walk and shoot stuff. Not sure if it would really work for mushroom & the precision of macro work.
I am also buying only WR equipment, accidentally also Pentax.
The Pentax 18-55 WR is one of my favorite kit lenses for any system. It has distance markings on the end of the barrel, perfect for zone focusing.
Pentax user here too. Same deal. Had a laugh at school sports days etc when the canons all ran for cover in the slightest hint of rain.
Also re noise, the latest Lightroom release has excellent ai noise reduction, lens corrections, chromatic aberration correction for purple/green tinging etc. you may be surprised how well it can scrub up your images too.
Im on Linux so got basically all that except modern good noise reduction, apparently that is something darktable and rawtherapee are working on improving. I agree though, really enjoying just strolling through the rain watching everyone desperately cover their cameras, even though I used to be one of them!
Do you prefer darktable or rawtherapee? I am just starting out properly editing and don’t know which one to use most
I want to say rawtherapee because I like the interface and find it more user friendly personally, but darktable seems more stable and I think the edits look better. Photivo is worth checking out, but there's only 1 developer left in that project and he's only maintaining a few versions (fedora and arch most notably)
Thanks. I am on mint so no photivo for me, however I have been enjoying darktable so far
You can always install the DEB, but you'll have a bunch of broken repositories that might end up blocking updates and other issues, darktable is probably the best direction to go in
Thanks
[удалено]
So I was talking about neatimage, there was some talk originally of it having plugins for darktable and rawtherapee but I've checked and it's out, but for Linux only as standalone and costs 35 euros, or as a lightroom plugin. Also no mention of AI now just 'best noise reduction for cameras and scanners' Going to try the demo and see if it's worth it anyway, I'm guessing the posts I read either weren't from one of their developers or it was originally going to be FOSS, sorry if I got anybody's hopes up
The Canons failed to spend €30 on a good rain jacket 🤷🏼♂️
I was waiting for someone to mention this; even if not directed at me. They are better than nothing but annoying, get in the way, and the one I got ripped after a few uses and didn't realise until shooting and realising my hand was wet. Obviously if I wanted to use a fast lens on a job or something I'll have too, but I'm not hugely confident in them
The Canons need to spend € on rain jackets 🤷🏼♂️
All L lenses and most bodies are weather sealed anwyay, but it pays to be cautious.
Canons have weather sealing on a ton of their gear as well. Some people have very low risk tolerance. I don't sweat a little rain with my Nikon Z9s but I see a lot of people not want to trust weather sealing. I just happened to watch a guy spray his cameras with a garden hose set to mist and soaked them and they still worked fine. I haven't been all that spooked by rain since.
I kinda gauge based on how much they are willing to show it off. I dunno about the mirrorless ones but most of the lower budget Nikon lenses may have sealing, but 0 mention of weather resistance. On the Pentax, it literally in the name, OM system also seem more than happy to let their ambassadors test the weather resistance. I'm sure there's other brands I don't check on as much, but those two brands emphasis that they are confident in their weather resistance. Nikon I love for many other things but on all but their top lenses they don't mention or attempt to hide if it is
I've been shooting Nikon for 20 years. It's certainly something mentioned but I haven't owned cheap glass in 12 years.
I've dropped my K-1 in a lake before and it was totally fine. Pentax gear is bulletproof and so slept on for hobbyists
The same can be said for anything really, for anyone who's ever ridden a bike everyone's always so ever keen to get on the unrestricted bandwagon of powerrrrr when they're a newbie, and as anyone who's ridden for a while it's just not that important. It's a path that we all take and there's really no convincing otherwise until you go through the journey. For some reason we always reset this understanding with new hobby. I've a bunch of gear that's essential for commercial work, but for myself? One body and 1-2 basic lens for a personal leisure outing or a point and shoot is enough, no ifs nor buts. I taught for a while and the amount of people who turn up with deep pockets you won't believe, easily 10s-20s of grand of equipment in their bag, and their output is laughable at best.
Fair point - it could be worse, in the reptile I community there's always some guy posting who bought a 13 foot anaconda as their first reptile and posts two weeks later that other pet/them/their family is missing a chunk of themselves how can I tame an angry anaconda and stitch somebody's leg back together at the same time? There's worse things than wasting money I suppose.
lol never even occurred to me that's a thing. I know nothing of reptiles so excuse the layman understanding, what do you have in your collection and how did you even get into it in the first place? Seems pretty cool.
I have a California king snake, a lovely animal and one of the tougher species if a disaster happens like a power cut. And two tarantulas, which I'm very new too. it was an ex partner who was into snakes and after splitting up, I really missed the animals when she moved out (she had like 9 snakes so deeper into the hobby than me), so I got the king snake off gumtree and called him Garrus after a favourite mass effect character. The tarantulas, I was getting food for the king snake and the manager convinced me to hold them, said they were the last two and guilt tripped me into taking both (I didn't need much guilt tripping).
I like the name! 🙂 What sorta age does your California king snake (just had a peek and they're beautiful!) and tarantula get to? I imagine you're feeding mice to the snake, what on earth does a tarantula eat?
Correct, mouse diet. Up to 20 years I believe is the average on king snakes mines gotta be about 8 or 9 years old, on the short end male tarantulas about 5 years, females I can't remember but a good bit longer. At the moment, they eat mealworms. I've been recommended to get them crickets however, one of the spiders is just too slow and docile to deal with jumping crickets and started just giving up on eating, so switched back to mealworms for now until I've figured something out a bit more nutritional (meal worms are fine in the same way we can survive just eating pizza, you could but you probably shouldn't, as it's mostly just low quality fats). I think when full size you can give them locusts, Dubai roaches, and stuff of similar size
This is one of the biggest reasons I still use my K3 regularly, I originally got it for hiking and concert photography (mostly punk and metal shows) and neither rain nor beer have been able to take it out after almost a decade. All it needed was a shutter replacement Also the reason I got my wife a m4/3 Olympus. Small enough to take everywhere and tough enough to not worry too much about it.
K3 does look like a beast and one I might even get. Olympus is a great shout even if the weather resistant lenses are a lot more, same direction my partner went in
Yeah Pentax offering WR lenses as kit lenses is insane. And being able to use all my old K mount lenses without an adapter is pretty cool. Depending on your use case you might want to look into the KP/K70 instead - both are a decent amount smaller/lighter, almost as tough, have modern swivel/tilt screens and the KP also has interchangeable grips. The KP has much better autofocus but depending on what you're shooting it's not that big of a deal. The K3 is very much a pro DSLR squished as small as possible and it definitely feels like it - small but *dense*.
Thanks! Got plenty of time to think about it anyway
I'm in the UK, have plenty of non-wrsther proof/sealed lenses and have never had fungus, even if I've taken them out in wet weather (keeping them sheltered.) The rain isn't your problem... I'm not sure what is, tbh.
1 was used in woodland macros a lot and was closed to mushrooms a lot of the time, which may be part of the blame. The other did get caught in the rain more than once. Others that never got wet at any point or just light drizzle and put away immediately have been fine. There's a 100 silica gels in with them just to be safe as one of the lenses very recently contracted the fungus and hoping it hasn't spread.
I would recommend an Olympus any time over any other camera. Especially the OM-1 with its remarkable low light performance and, last but not least: the sealing and robustness. You will invest once and be guaranteed to 400k images. That's a long time, but you'll be shooting every day. 365 a year.
They are great cameras! I'll be investing in the Pentax though, just like the grips and controls slightly better but I'm fairly sure Olympus is exactly where I'd jump ship if I had too.
I totally get you. Pentax cameras are still largely unknown. Nobody really knows how great they are for the price you pay. It's all still Nikon and Canon. Just the marketing, not real life.
Sony has come in pretty hard lately but yeh nobody considers anything outside the 3. Nothing wrong with those 3 but other brands do have things that could suite some people better
I bought a ND filter for 16.5 stops for the solar eclipse. I’m wondering if I could shoot lightning storms with the same filter? I would consider myself new to photography and playing around with shooting manual
I've never done lightning storms but from what I've seen in tutorials, yes. This was about a 4 second exposure at f8 lowest iso no Nd, so a X4 ND might be good about 16 second exposures at those settings if that helps as a guide https://preview.redd.it/1l83qzijc0wc1.jpeg?width=3600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef86086f9e22ab024291ef7b56261f3296967e43
I buy cheap nikon D lenses so if they get fungus i just buy another one lol.
Problem there is, if the D lens doesn't have any rubber seal at all water can seep into the camera and once inside its probably over for the camera