Technology catch-all thread

[southsider2k5]

Any photogs on the board? I'm debating whether to update my DSLR. I have a Nikon D5000 that I bought 8 years ago. I started reading reviews of some of the newer models and also the mirrorless cameras, so now i'm down the rabbit hole of maybe buying something new. The upgrades seem to be mostly tech upgrades like better autofocusing systems or a touchscreen. Seems like from an image quality perspective there may be a slight bump but not noticeable unless i'm printing off large prints (which I don't do often and when I do they look fine).

 

I'm also debating jumping from Nikon to Canon or even Sony for their mirrorless camera. Problem is I have 3 Nikon lenses so I would have to start over if I jumped to another brand. I take a ton of photos of my kids and we travel a good amount. But I want to start taking more video and I think Canon DSLR's handle that better than the Nikon.

 

I'm also thinking about buying the new Tamron 18-400mm lens. That's an insane focal length range for one lens.

 

I don't know much about the mirrorless, but I have a cannon DSLR and I use it a ton for both kids, sports, and lake front pics. It works great for me. I have the Tamron 18-250 and use it all of the time.

[RockRaines]

I have a newer Sony, and yet I use my iphone for 99.99999% of my pictures.

[Brian]

So no 8 plus? I'll stick with 7 until next year

 

[RockRaines]

So no 8 plus? I'll stick with 7 until next year

? Yes there is.

 

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-8

[Brian]

? Yes there is.

 

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-8

 

I stand corrected.

[RockRaines]

I stand corrected.

V8 doesnt do it for me anyway, the faster chip, meh. I havent seen my 7 lag yet

[Brian]

V8 doesnt do it for me anyway, the faster chip, meh. I havent seen my 7 lag yet

 

Was just comparing and thought the same thing. I'll wait another year. My AT&T contract will be up anyway and may switch to Verizon when they offer a free phone to flip.

[RockRaines]

Was just comparing and thought the same thing. I'll wait another year. My AT&T contract will be up anyway and may switch to Verizon when they offer a free phone to flip.

I kind of like the X, but I think I'll wait a bit. The 7 still screams and ive never had an issue.

[Y2HH]

I kind of like the X, but I think I'll wait a bit. The 7 still screams and ive never had an issue.

 

I still have a 6S+, so I'll be getting the X.

[Jose Abreu]

I still have a 6 so I look forward to getting the X. I just hope I'm able to get it sometime in November due to the limited quantity. I only want the 64 GB one so that should help my chances (?)

[Texsox]

Any photogs on the board? I'm debating whether to update my DSLR. I have a Nikon D5000 that I bought 8 years ago. I started reading reviews of some of the newer models and also the mirrorless cameras, so now i'm down the rabbit hole of maybe buying something new. The upgrades seem to be mostly tech upgrades like better autofocusing systems or a touchscreen. Seems like from an image quality perspective there may be a slight bump but not noticeable unless i'm printing off large prints (which I don't do often and when I do they look fine).

 

I'm also debating jumping from Nikon to Canon or even Sony for their mirrorless camera. Problem is I have 3 Nikon lenses so I would have to start over if I jumped to another brand. I take a ton of photos of my kids and we travel a good amount. But I want to start taking more video and I think Canon DSLR's handle that better than the Nikon.

 

I'm also thinking about buying the new Tamron 18-400mm lens. That's an insane focal length range for one lens.

 

This past summer while travelling up the east coast and across Canada we left our Canon DSLR at home and rarely missed it. First time in 30 years I took a vacation without a full bag of camera gear and my picture memories only suffered marginally.

[iamshack]

This past summer while travelling up the east coast and across Canada we left our Canon DSLR at home and rarely missed it. First time in 30 years I took a vacation without a full bag of camera gear and my picture memories only suffered marginally.

I agree. I bought a Nikon a few years ago when our son was born and it's more of a hassle than anything. I don't have the interest or the energy to really learn how to utilize its capabilities that would make a significant improvement over the latest camera phones. That isn't to say it doesn't take beautiful photos, but not any that really make it worth lugging around.

[Bob Sacamano]

Holy hell the price of new phones these days...I have a Galaxy S6 that I guess I will hold onto for as long as I can as the phones never seem to really upgrade enough to warrant the price.

[Chisoxfn]

I agree. I bought a Nikon a few years ago when our son was born and it's more of a hassle than anything. I don't have the interest or the energy to really learn how to utilize its capabilities that would make a significant improvement over the latest camera phones. That isn't to say it doesn't take beautiful photos, but not any that really make it worth lugging around.

I'll never buy one of those fancy cameras for that reason. I hate carrying crap...like hate it, so while the pictures are pretty amazing that those cameras can do, the fact is, I know I'll never carry the damn thing around when I really want it. Quality on phones is good enough and convenience is absolutely amazing (not to mention ability to synch to cloud or amazon prime photo's, whatever it might be). So many great action shots I can get with my kids that are taken totally at random vs. a camera I know I'd never carry around.

 

On a sidenote, any good ways / solutions people have relative to organizing photos and keeping archives clean (with my kids, my wife especially, is notoriously bad at staying organized and I want to have a good way of organizing and maintaining photos).

[Brian]

Downloading iOS 11. One of my favorite times of year.

[Jenksismyhero]

I'll never buy one of those fancy cameras for that reason. I hate carrying crap...like hate it, so while the pictures are pretty amazing that those cameras can do, the fact is, I know I'll never carry the damn thing around when I really want it. Quality on phones is good enough and convenience is absolutely amazing (not to mention ability to synch to cloud or amazon prime photo's, whatever it might be). So many great action shots I can get with my kids that are taken totally at random vs. a camera I know I'd never carry around.

 

On a sidenote, any good ways / solutions people have relative to organizing photos and keeping archives clean (with my kids, my wife especially, is notoriously bad at staying organized and I want to have a good way of organizing and maintaining photos).

 

My phone (galaxy s8+) has a great camera and works for the vast majority of day to day stuff. But the image quality doesn't really compare to a modern DSLR, especially when it comes to fast action and low light situations. That's a huge issue when you have kids. Zoom is also very, very limited. Lugging a camera around can be a pain though, I can totally understand that.

 

I'm with you on organizing photos. I think I posted here before that I used to use Picassa and I loved it. I have tens of thousands of pictures and video on my computer and they're not organized very well (lazy uploading on my part). I have multiples folders for different cameras, different phones, etc. Picassa was great because it read the metadata for each file and sorted all of the files by date. But now that Picassa is gone i'm still searching for a better program. I picked up Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Elements (photoshop for video). It comes with an organizer program that is basically the same as Picassa. It's not as good and i'm having issues uploading a lot of folders. Anything with a corrupt file or a file extension it doesn't like, like .avi, kills the sync process and it never tells you what file it gets stuck on. But, for the 85% of my stuff that I did get synced, they're all there, sorted by date.

 

In terms of back-up, I have three systems - an internal HD that stores everything, an external hard drive dedicated as a backup, and a WD MyCloud NAS system that's dedicated as the main backup (it's a whole separate little box with a hard drive and an internet connection). Basically everything gets downloaded into the internal HD and the MyCloud automatically syncs it on a weekly basis. And then i'll occasionally grab all those files and back it up onto the external drive manually.

[StrangeSox]

We basically only use our (entry level Nikon) DSLR on vacations/trips, but we can get way better shots with it in those situations than we could get from a camera phone. Especially for good close-ups of wildlife, or action shots of birds. You need that long focal length and you'll never get that on a camera phone.

 

For organizing, phone photos aren't really, but we just create separate folders for each trip and have a similar backup system to what jenks described. We also go through and upload most of them to shutterfly, again organized by album.

Edited September 20, 2017 by StrangeSox

[Iwritecode]

So yesterday afternoon around 2 PM I got hit with some sort of spambot email thing. I opened up my email (Yahoo) and literally had 150+ unread messages. Most of them are subscriptions to some sort of newsletter or website asking for confirmation. A handful of them are in some sort of foreign language.

 

As best as I can tell, nobody actually got INTO my email account. I have two-factor authentication set up so I should get a text if someone tries to log in from another computer. Although I did immediately change my password. For now, I went through and set all the emails to spam. I also went and changed the passwords for a few of my financial accounts. Amazon, Paypal, Discover, ect... Didn't find anything out of the ordinary on any of them.

 

One of the emails was confirmation from Best Buy for the purchase of a $1300 laptop but when I went to my BB account, there isn't anything there. So it was probably a fake email or some other account that was set up with my email. Either way, I changed my BB password too.

 

Googling the problem looks like there really isn't a "fix" for it other than setting the emails to spam. I'm not taking the chance on clicking any of the unsubscribe links. I've been monitoring it this morning and it's slowed down a bit but a few are still coming through.

 

It's really annoying because I've had this email for damn near 20 years now and have never had a problem with it. I don't even understand the end-game here because if they don't have access to the email account, what good does it do sending them all?

[bigruss]

Sounds like a phishing scheme, actually kind of clever when you think about it. Bombard a user, including fake receipt confirmations, to make them think they need to change their passwords. They probably hoped you would go through their fake BB email to reset your password, and then you'd be hacked.

[StrangeSox]

Speaking of phishing schemes, Equifax's twitter account is sending out links to phishing sites. **DO NOT GO TO THE WEBSITE SHOWN, IT IS A FAKE PHISHING WEBSITE**

 

 

as of this posting, the tweet was still up

[bigruss]

LOL, that situation is just all sorts of bad.

 

I work in Identity and Access Management, it's STILL hard to convince IT people (much less business people) on the power and risk of bad Identity management and security as a whole.

 

 

[Iwritecode]

Sounds like a phishing scheme, actually kind of clever when you think about it. Bombard a user, including fake receipt confirmations, to make them think they need to change their passwords. They probably hoped you would go through their fake BB email to reset your password, and then you'd be hacked.

 

I always take the time to open a new tab and type the web address in directly rather than trusting the link in an email. Even if I think it's not fake.

[bigruss]

I always take the time to open a new tab and type the web address in directly rather than trusting the link in an email. Even if I think it's not fake.

Always the best course of action, but many people don't still.

 

At my last company we ran internal phishing campaigns to get metrics and educate our salesforce, 70% of the salesforce provided their password in the phishing email. We were floored, and we tried to use that metric to back up asks for things like MFA.

[Iwritecode]

One of the emails was confirmation from Best Buy for the purchase of a $1300 laptop but when I went to my BB account, there isn't anything there. So it was probably a fake email or some other account that was set up with my email. Either way, I changed my BB password too.

 

Maybe I spoke too soon. Just got an email from Best Buy asking to take a survey about the conversation that I had with one of their customer service representatives. I didn't have any conversation with a CSR...

 

So I went to my account and this time I found the order for the laptop, but the order had failed because the credit card couldn't be authorized. What's weird is that the credit card they tried to use isn't one of mine. So somebody got into my best buy account, added a credit card to my profile and then tried to order a laptop with said credit card.

 

I noticed that on the sign-in screen it uses my email address instead of a username. So I changed the email associated with that account.

 

The good news is that the spam emails have all but stopped. So hopefully I caught everything in time.

[RockRaines]

Sounds like a phishing scheme, actually kind of clever when you think about it. Bombard a user, including fake receipt confirmations, to make them think they need to change their passwords. They probably hoped you would go through their fake BB email to reset your password, and then you'd be hacked.

Phishing and social engineering are the number one ways companies and people get hacked. I dont think most folks understand this. They think some dude on their computer is throwing some sort of code at some "backdoor" because they've watched too many movies. Even companies like mine (we do security) get over a 20% fail rate on phishing exercises. Its so easy to get someones user name and password.

 

I actually signed a very large auto manufacturer by "stealing" 6 UN and PW's from a desk right outside our conference room.