paddler4

I vaguely remember that years ago, after years of heavy use, one of my three Kenko tubes got loose and no longer had a reliable connection. I replaced the set, so now I have 5....

Notice that the letters are not all in focus. This is not surprising: the label is curved, and DOF is razor thin at these distances. The only solutions are to stop the lens down or focus stack. If you stop the lens down, you are likely to find that the increased appearance of sharpness from having everything in focus far more than offsets any loss of sharpness from diffraction. For example, this shot was taken at f/13 nominal with a 100mm macro lens and a 36mm extension. The effective f stop was much smaller, so diffraction already started. I didn't calculate, but as a rough rule of thumb, this is an effective f/stop of at least f/26. However, the image looks sharp.

Usually, the reason would be low light. However, I can't answer why you have a problem with 12+20 but not with 36mm. My guess is that the electrical contact is weak and that having two tubes makes this worse.

yes, but then again, there are more people than at any time in history 😁 What I think is the big change is the number of pictures per person. the combination of digital and cell phone cameras has had a huge effect on the number of photos taken.

Maybe simpler to shoot digital and put the weed to other uses.

Yes, that's one reason I ruled out the R7. No really good RF-S lenses at the time. Now we have to wait to see whether Canon will license third party RF lenses too.

Also, lots of files related to the OS could be either out of date or corrupted. You could run the Windows file system checker and let it repair what it finds, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e. that might not help, but it's easy enough to try.

My old windows machine became cranky because the graphics card was not sufficient for current Adobe programs. I upgraded to a new computer with Windows 10 in June 2022 and stayed on it only Sept 2023 because that was still what my university was using. I had zero problems with Adobe under Windows 10 after getting a new computer. The transition to Windows 11 was seamless.

sorry, i misunderstood.

You might get more answers in the wet darkroom forum. This is the forum for digital darkroom work.

It depends on what you shoot. For me, having the 70-105mm range and the IS trumps the difference in optical quality. I had both the EF versions and agree that the II is not greatly better than the I, but it did avoid zoom creep. I now use an RF 24-105, and it's one of my two most used lenses.

In this case, more than good enough, if it's in mint condition. The original 70-200 f/4 L was a superb lens.

Given how easy uninstalling and reinstalling adobe products is now that it's a subscription model, sometimes the simplest thing to do with a problem that won't go away is to uninstall and reinstall

By 1:4, do you mean f/4? If so: I've owned both the first generation and the second generation 70-200 f/4 L lenses. Both are excellent. The current II is truly a superb lens. In fact, I bought it because there was a rumor that it was one of the EF lenses that would be discontinued, and I wanted to buy one before they disappeared. That apparently didn't happen; they are still available at retailers. It's so good that I kept it when I switched to mirrorless and use it with an RF adapter. it is NOT the case that the f/2.8 is a better lens. It's just one stop faster. And the cost of that, when I bought mine (the RF specs are different) was that the f/2.8 was twice the price, twice the weight, and a lot bulkier. On a telephoto, I never need the slightly narrower DOF f/2.8 offers, and in the very rare cases where I need the extra stop, I just boost ISO by one stop. On modern cameras, a one stop increase in ISO is not a big deal. So for me, the f/4 was clearly the superior choice. I've had one or the other of these lenses for a long time, probably well over a decade, and I've never once regretted not buying the f/2.8.

An electronic, non-global shutter can create rolling shutter artifacts when the subject is fast moving. The point of the global shutter is to allow a fully electronic shutter without rolling shutter artifacts. I don't have this problem, but it can be avoided by using electronic first curtain shutter, which is fast enough for anything I do. See https://photographylife.com/mechanical-electronic-shutter-efcs