MurMan

Well, this might bring me back to KC. I'll do my best not to make Mike or Ken ban me.

Agreed. That's why I wrote "right partner". Sorry about your bad experience. It's often said that a business partnership is like a marriage. You've got to trust your partner, but you might know if they are trustworthy until years into the relationship. I had a few potential partners, but I didn't trust that they could hold up their end of the bargain. They seemed to be "interested", but I was looking for "committed".

I've made it to the brink of launching a small company to sell a small electronic device four separate times. The devices did very different things, but were all based on simple to medium complexity embedded microcomputer designs. Last one was cloud-connected smoker monitor/controller with a smart phone app. Remote control, cooking profiles, graphics, etc. No - not that kind of smoker!!! The product requirements, design, development, and proto testing parts were great. But, when the time came for the big commitment to a production run came, I backed out. My work experience of production nightmares, ECO's, and field returns was sobering. But in the end, it was all the other functions, like sales, marketing, and running the business that kept me from pulling the trigger. If I had teamed with the right partner, things might have been different. Hardware is tough and covering everything by yourself is just too much.

Looks like they've upgraded the single point of failure to four points of failure.

I've had questions about DSLRs that I have never been able to track down good answers to until recently. Mostly, the technical stuff related to optics, image sensors, low-light performance, noise, etc. For most, understanding the technology might not make you a better photographer unless you're really pushing the limits of the technology. I tend to remember concepts, not facts, so I wanted to understand what's going on in my camera and in post-processing. I recently finished a course that I highly recommend if you're interested in diving deeper. It's a series of 18 lectures shot on the Google campus two years ago. It's taught by a Stanford prof, Marc Levoy, who heads Google's Computational Photography group. Here's the link: Digital Photography Course This course is not for everyone. There is a little math: trig, correlations, integrals, matrices, etc. But, I think that there's a lot to learn even if you ignore the math. The instructor is a Renaissance man that knows a lot about the history, art, and technology of photography. There are two 'ringers' in the class; one from Pixar and one from Industrial Light and Magic that make things interesting.

This shot has a very different look than most of your other long-exposure shots, Ken. Excellent choice to subdue the colors and keep the interior dark. It's interesting to see how the graffiti on the wall interacts with the exposed rafters on the roof. That part of the wall looks transparent. The red light inside the TV makes it downright demonic. The overall look is more like a painting than a photo. Well done.

Fair enough. I won't.

Have to say that I disagree with most of what you've written. So, you're saying that a message is delivered more effectively by speaking than by music? Never thought I'd get this from someone in a musician's forum. Do you hear how extremely judgmental this sounds?. How do you know what's in the hearts and minds of these "poser wanabees"? The "if they could get away wih it" part makes it sound like there is something wrong about rocking out on Saturday night. Perhaps you could explain this to the forum.

LOL. It's a band with complications.

I play on several worship teams and unfortunately see the scenario you describe play out every few years. The fundamental problem is that being a good worship leader is a difficult job that requires a wide variety of skills that are seldom present in one person. The good ones get the job and learn how to quickly fill in their missing skills, such as navigating the church politics. Then there is the fact that WLs have to put up with so much negative crap, well-intended or not, from people with absolutely no clue. All I can say is that brother, I feel your pain. You'll have to look for reasons other than the music to stay motivated.

Me too. I've been reading a lot lately about sensor technology in order to understand the limits of ISO settings. Why can't we just keep doubling ISO to get stronger pixels? Or, why can't we keep doubling the exposure time? What are the sources of noise? It boggles my mind to find that current sensors saturate around 150K photons per pixel. For a 14-bit sensor, that's around 10 photons per bit of resolution. Amazing. I've been taking nighttime photos for the past few weeks. Learning to use my camera controls in the dark. Getting the focus right. Learning the limits of ISO and exposure for my gear. Ken clearly knows how to get low noise images from his gear without a lot of light. I like some of the results I'm getting, but I have to say that nighttime photography at the level that Ken is showing us isn't easy.

Gorgeous lighting on both of these shots, Ken. Love the 'Banana Boat' shot!

For those with interests in astrophotography and unlimited gear budgets ( Ken), here is one cool camera. They've taken a stock Nikon D5500 and added a Peltier cooler to the CCD sensor in order to reduce thermal noise during long exposures. I would have thought they would have used a full-frame sensor camera rather than a DX camera. If you need to ask how much it costs, you probably can't afford it ...

Thanks so much for confirming that. Think my reading is beginning to pay off. I first read about a month ago Tony Northrup's "How to Create Stunning Digital Photography" which has a night photography chapter. As for blogs, I started with yours, of course. Another blog that helped me learn about astrophotography and Milky Way photography is Lonely Speck. Great tutorials. Watched an 80 minute video on YouTube last night of a class that Tim Cooper gave on . It seemed to have a lot of very practical advice. Got an email last week about a sale on the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 for Nikon for what I thought was a great price and I couldn't resist it. Now that I've got the gear, I'm ready to spend time around Mt. Cuyumacha just east of San Diego. Just learned last night that we're nearing the end of the Milky Way season here. Guess I can hone my skills until next year.

Ken, that's a beautiful shot. I've been reading a lot about nighttime photography lately and am wondering how you lit this shot. It looks look like a longish (< 30 sec based on no star trails) exposure shot with moonlight casting the shadow to the right of the Joshua tree. Also looks like you light-painted the tree and small chaparral to the left to bring it out. The rocks on the right appear to have been lit differently than the left formation, but the difference may be due to the differences in their texture/angle. Or maybe a little post-processing to bring them out. Is this right?