Bill Kuta

I can remember realizing one day about 25 years ago, when I had had my beard for about 15 years already, that I didn't mentally picture myself with a beard. Do now, though.

A few times, I've missed putting a caption on an image. That will prevent it from going on sale, and It might not be obvious what the problem is.

Our letter carrier wears gloves, and much of the intermediate mail handling is automated, BUT before getting to our house, the letter carrier has also picked up outgoing mail from possibly hundreds of other mailboxes.

Nor has it been eliminated 🤧

You may be right about needing a bit more extension on the ES-1. The macro lens is only extended out to 1:1.5, but the ES-1 is extended all the way out. Sadly, I don't have anything on hand to add to the extension. But I'm pretty happy with the results so far anyway. Edit: Just ordered an extension ring from Hong Kong. Will quarantine and fumigate upon arrival.

After a bit more messing about, I've eliminated the Sigma close-up lens and captured a little bit more (almost all) of the visible frame in the slide mount. Now it's: Canon SL1 APS-C Vello 21mm extension tube Canon 50mm f2.5 macro lens Nikon ES-1, extended most of the way out

OK, pixel-peepers don't bother reading this one. After a little noodling around, I cobbled together on-hand items, and can get most of a slide with a Nikon ES-1 and an APS-C camera. Back to front: --Canon SL1 18mp APS-C camera --Vello 31mm extension tube --Canon 50mm f2.5 macro lens --Sigma achromatic macro lens (a 1.6x "close-up lens") --Nikon ES-1 extended about a half-inch Results look good, but I just grabbed a random slide. Will need to look for sharpest ones. What I don't get is, I'm capturing nearly all of the long edges of the frame (i.e., the edges at the top and bottom of a horizontal image), but lose a small but noticeable amount at the sides. Again, just trying to see what might work from what I already have. It helps that the Canon lens, Sigma close-up lens, and ES-1 all have 52mm threads.

Years ago, I used a collection of programs to do what Lightroom does. Switching to LR (first non-subscription, then subscription) was wonderful, not only because I had one tool that did it all, but also it did most of the tasks better. What I don't like about the Adobe subscription model is that I use only LR, but have to pay for PS as well. Any time I get a satisfaction survey from Adobe, I fill it with pleas to unbundle the two products.

I suggested what I did because it's exactly what I did to an eight-year-old HP laptop running Windows 7: replaced the HD with an SSD myself (found helpful youtube video for my exact model), then did a fresh install of Windows 10 (OK, that's another $100, but avoids Win7 non-support issues). It's running better than ever, but that's usually one result from a fresh OS install. Didn't encounter any problems.

Depends on what's "dried up" in your laptop. If the hard drive has gone bad, you can probably get a 1Tb SSD drive for $100-120, replace the bad one, reinstall your OS, and it might work better than ever.

Nothing this month but a $100 refund & resale. The refund is of a long-cleared and paid sale from early last year, giving me a negative cleared balance at the moment. (See "Refunds" thread.) Also my slowest start since 2010, way behind recent years. But my search results remain good. So yeah, easy to believe there's some admin realignment behind the scenes.

And a clawback: since the April 2019 sale being refunded had cleared last year, and the resale hasn't, I now have a cleared balance of $-38.40.

Had the same situation this morning--very brief excitement to see a $100 sale, then noticed the refund from April 2 of last year. Same amount and terms. ?

Getting back to the OP: this year so far is my worst start on Alamy since 2010. And the coronavirus front is no better--the first cases reported in my state of Maryland are in my county (Montgomery).

Buoyed by success at switching my 8-year-old desktop to Win10, I did the same thing with my 8-year-old HP laptop yesterday. Same process--remove HD and replace with SSD; clean install of Win10 from OEM disc. It runs better than ever, without all the HP crapware (but that's usually the result if you do any fresh install). Googling my Win10 prospects beforehand, I found lots of discouraging links for my particular old laptop, but it seems that over the years Win10 has gotten better at coping with older hardware. It does have a slow wifi card, and prospects to replace it do sound dicy. Maybe I'll try a USB wireless adapter. This laptop is now computer #3, and might be destined for our daughter's family. I've been doing most photo processing lately on a new Alienware 17" laptop.