I still have trouble believing they sell twenty times as many smart watches as digital cameras now.
Like I get that a lot of people probably mostly want smart watches as a fitness tracker, and tracking biometrics of some sort is the only reason I really understand to get one. But I feel like there should be a really massive market for standalone digital cameras too and I guess there just isn't.
@Lacci This app having Wear OS support was the only reason I got a smartwatch.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=prox.lab.calclock
@Mayabotics
My watch would be soooo boring. Also seeing my schedule all the time if I was busier might make me more anxious, but I have OCD so I'm weird. Like if I make to do lists it can be really bad. It's like it just intensifies my anxiety about things. I don't know if it's writing it all down in one place or what.
I guess on the plus side the SD card of my digital camera and my photo library are anything but boring. I mean unless you don't like wildlife, landscape, and astrophotos.
@Lacci Completely understand the anxiety issue, and honestly my schedule is pretty boring, but it's expensive to miss doctor's appointments and missing work meetings was a recipe for self-flagellation and anxiety spirals.
Standalone cameras are good though, I need to get out more with my mirrorless, especially since the weather has been good for park wandering.
@Mayabotics
That's totally understandable.
What system do you use? I actually use a Pentax DSLR, so a bit off the beaten path these days. They say they want to stick to DSLRs (which kind of appeals to me), but I am a little doubtful they'll be able to stay in business. Still, all my glass will work well with an adapter on a mirrorless. I mostly have vintage stuff.
@Lacci I didn't have issues finding lenses, but I'm not a collector. Besides the two kit lenses that came with the camera, I bought an UWA, and my go-to prime, a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens.
I don't mind manual focus at all, I regularly used a film SLR in high school, just didn't really want to deal with the complications that lens mount adapters bring.
@Lacci Yeah, the lenses aren't cheap, especially since the first-party mirrorless lenses tend to have built-in image stablization. Sigma and Rokinon are the more reasonably priced 3rd-party lenses, but they do sacrifice features, typically AF and image stabilization.
My UWA is a 12mm f/2.0, and I haven't used it for astro yet. The light pollution at my typical observing spot has gotten dramatically worse over the last couple years.
I want to get down to Cherry Springs though. The weather didn't want to cooperate this past winter.
@Lacci I think IBIS was an extra product differentiator between Sony's APS-C and Full frame cameras up until recently.
It's slightly annoying not having it, but I also have a remote shutter trigger and a tripod, so I can work around it.
The lens stabilization is a really nice feature on the two kit lenses, especially the telephoto. It's just a shame that that they're kind of cheap in other ways.
That makes sense Pentax is using Sony sensors, they're practically the only OEM left for digital still camera sensors.
@Lacci Yeah, I have no idea how people can afford to buy even the mid-range lenses, never mind the premium ones.
Were you still seeing a decent number of animals when you went out? It feels like everything except white-tailed deer is becoming more rare here.
@Lacci It's probably just me. Thinking back, lately I've been mostly out during the day or well after sunset for stargazing, not really during the dusk or dawn hours.
Where I grew up, we occasionally had an animal scream that sounded like that. Typically it would be blamed on a fisher cat or bobcat, but either a coyote or a red fox were more likely culprits. (Fisher cats have a terrifying scream, but it doesn't really sound human-like.) Though I always found rabbit screams the most terrifying.
@Mayabotics
Hopefully that's the explanation, though things have been rough for a lot of ecosystems.
I thought the scream I heard really was human till it repeated twice. I don't think a human could physically have done that. I suspect this was a cougar because it's the only animal I've found recordings of making a scream like that one, though it's surprising how many animals scream in a human way. But I didn't see it so it could have been something else.
@Lacci Back in CT, there were basically legends about a hidden population of mountain lions (local name in CT for cougars) that somehow managed to survive extirpation in the 1800s, but with the exception of one that was killed by being hit by a car in 2011, there hasn't been any physical evidence for them in the state since they went extinct. I think that one is the male you mentioned.
Most of the time when someone from the CT DEEP's Wildlife Division investigated sightings, they ended up being misidentifications of other animals by the witness, typically bobcats.
In NY, a couple valid sightings have been traced to escapees from zoos, and that treking male. Most of the big predator fears here really seem to be about wolves migrating in from Canada, and not the native black bear population. (Hunters keep killing wandering wolves whenever they do end up in the state, despite it being illegal.)
@Lacci A lot of the northeast states have pretty regressive hunting policies regarding predators.
I would suspect that if we tried reintroducing cougars here, they would be "mistakenly" hunted as bobcats, like what happens with wolves and coyotes. NY for example, have very few restrictions on hunting coyotes and bobcats.
There were attempts to re-establish a Canada lynx population here in NY 34 years ago that failed, and I suspect more of them were illegally hunted than the 8 known to have been taken accidentally or as damaging wildlife.
@Lacci It sounds like they are encountering something that was seen in NY with the lynx reintroduction attempt, a lot of roadway deaths as the felids try to cross between unconnected wilderness.
There appears a program meant to fix the problem by improving Florida's wildlife corridor.
@Lacci Yeah, these environmental and ecological problems are all interconnected.
It's so frustrating that more people don't see that.
@Mayabotics
Very frustrating :(
Social problems as well. The atomization of society is at least partly about lots more work and less free time than we once had. And that excessive focus on productivity, production (often of stuff that breaks far too fast), and consumption keeps all those cars and trucks on the road. And there's a very concerted effort to keep people from really being able to grasp the interconnections, presumably because they might do something about all of it.
Lacci 🐇
Maya