fotolopithecus

They started building cameras cheesier back during the film days except for their higher end models. Plastic, and stamped pieces of metal joined together. Now it's even worse because the manufacturers are spitting out new models every couple of years with more, and more useless features that add nothing to photography but at the cost of build quality. At one time you could expect a new camera every five years or so with film. Anyway, there's nothing you can do about it because a new generation is being catered to, and they like nothing more than a camera that will do everything but scratch their posterior.

So the cameras assessment of the amount of charge left is fairly accurate I guess. It kind of surprises me how much charge simply dissipates from a little clock in the camera. I would think there was little internal backup battery in the camera, because what happens if you store your camera without the battery in it, or it runs out completely. I worked in a place where we had walkie talkies radios that had to be taken once a week down to hq to be drained completely on some machine otherwise they wouldn't hold their charge for a full shift. Don't remember what kind of batteries they were, but they might have been similar.

Interesting. I think I've noted that if you leave the battery unused inside the camera for a period of time, an lets say its down to 80% it seems to lose charge quite rapidly once you do start using it relative to being fully charged. I've just charged a new battery to 100% and put it in a drawer which I plan to check in a month to see where it is. What got me wondering about all this is that I believe I put a nearly fully charged battery in a camera for a couple of months unused and it was nearly drained after two months. Maybe down to 10% or something like that.

I'm curious if anyone knows how long a fully charged Sony NP-FZ100 battery will last unused outside of the camera before it starts losing its charge? How long will it last inside the camera with the camera off, and unused? Where does the charge go?

The time of year can have a lot to do with it. In fact, there's something called seasonal affective disorder which is caused by the lack of light this time of year, and manifests itself as a kind of malaise, and depression. The Covid thing might have a little to do with it as governments worldwide are milking the epidemic for all it's worth to get their populations accustomed to authoritarian rule. In any event I would suggest doing indoor still life's during these months just to stay in the photographic game.

A similar thing happened at Popular Photography a few several years ago. Little by little repairs weren't made, and owners were seen less, and less, until they finally folded their tent. Same deal at the photo corner. Sadly I think this place is also probably going the way of the Dodo.

I'm fully invested in Sony at this point, but I love retro controls, and still have a place in my heart for Nikon, so I may get it if mostly for sentimental reasons.

Yeah, the writing has been on the wall for some time now. When you think of it a dslr kind of seems a little like a Rube Goldberg contraption compared with Mirrorless. Overly complex mouse running on a wheel type thing.

Very weird, looks almost like the Carter's are hand puppets, like Jeff Dunham's Walter.

That sounds a bit philosophical, but I'm speaking more of the limit in physics. In any event I don't see a future time when a tiny sensor beats or equals a larger one given the same technology.

I don't think phones are destined to take over the world, except for (excuse the terminology, no looking down the nose intended) Snap shooters. There are limits to what can be done with a tiny sensor

The Nikon D300 was a nice camera with good highlight dynamic range as I recall, but........yeah, why did you do that.

I'm just curious how many people have sold photographic gear they later wished they hadn't. I once owned a Zeiss 34-70 f/3.4 zoom back in the eighties for a Contax camera I had. The camera company went bust so I changed back to Nikon. In any event I sold off the Zeiss, and have regretted it ever since. It probably could have been adapted to What I have now. To this day I miss the look that lens gave to scenes, and how different the lens coating colors were when I looked down into the barrel under a light. Any similar regrets from some of you?

Well a few people care about my photography within a small group of friends, and family, but that's about it. I do photography because it's always been a relaxing activity, almost therapeutic in nature, and I enjoy the gear aspects, tech talk etc. It also nicely supplements my other hobby which is history, for documenting historic structures, places, etc. My attitude is kind of like a funny tv ad I saw about some medical product recently wherein a retired gentleman is playing golf badly, but gets to do so because of whatever the med is he's taking. He say's he plays golf badly, and he intends to go on playing golf badly for years to come. So, while I'd like to think I'm at least a competent photographer, in truth I really don't care what others think because it's other reasons I do it. I suppose if I had made a living out of it I'd care a lot more.