u/Direct_Taste_3844

I am not a "professional" photographer in the sense that I have my own photography business or that photography is part of my daily duties at work.

However, I have used my photography and editing skills to convince my employer to use me as their photographer for events they host and when they need stock photographs taken for use on our website, socials, publications, etc. Whilst I am not being specifically paid for this the time spend taking photos and editing does count towards my contracted office hours each week. And that it why I am happy to do it, I would much rather be out taking photos and spending my office time editing than fiddling with spreadsheets, sitting in meetings, etc which makes up the bulk of my day job.

However, I am using my personal camera equipment and my own Lightroom account which I pay for to do this work. I do use lightroom for personal use too but I only really need it once every couple of months for the volume of photos I take outside of work so until recently just used to subscribe for a month at a time whereas recently I have found myself letting the subscription roll on from month to month at my own expense as it makes editing work photos so much quicker and easier.

I am also concerned about the ware and tear on my own camera equipment more than the cost of lightroom. My camera is nothing specia but good enough to produce the quality of images my employer wants. It is only graded for a shutter life of 100,000 exposures. Over the course of a few of recent events and a bunch of stock photos in the past month I have taken somewhere in the region of 3000-4000 shots. As a hobbyist photographer I only take maybe 5000-10,000 per year outside of work. So if I keep doing that many per month for work that's using at least 3% of my cameras expected lifespan each month or 36% per year. At that rate a camera which could have lasted me 10-20 years could be approaching the end of it's life inside of 3-4 years.

• Has anyone ever been in a similar situation of using their own equipment for an employer in a salaried day job type role?
• And if so were you able to come to some kind of arrangement to compensate you for use of your equipment and/or other expenses ?
• Did your employer already have policies in place to compensate you for use of your equipment or was it something you had to bring up - If so how did you raise that with them?

I think for me the best outcome would be to receive financial compensation for my camera use. E.g my camera body has an RRP of around £600 so if in a month I used up 3000 shots equating to roughly 3% of a cameras life they pay me £18 in wear and tear compensation. I can put that into a fund to replace my camera as and when I need to and it's still significantly cheaper for them to keep using me as an in house salaried admin guy who also does photos than to hire in a contract photographer.

The alternative is that I convince them to pay for an office camera that I use for all work related photography. This has a big upside in that I could probably convince them to buy something higher end that I can work with but I would only be allowed to use it for work. It would also potentially mean I no longer hold the monopoly on being the office photography guy as they would likely want others to learn to use it. This would mean I get less opportunities to get out of the office and take and edit photographs on work time. I enjoy my day job even when I am not photographing and I feel bad about trying to gatekeep photography from my colleagues but it's really the highlight of my job and I would be reluctant to lose full control of it.

Happy to hear anyones experience or thoughts about this. Apologies for the long rambling post.

Thanks in advance

Recently I bought a second hand Canon EF-S 18-135mm USM and yesterday took it out for it's first run to take some street photos for a project I am working on for my employer. It was bought from MPB listed as good condition with no notes of any issues.

It wasn't the easiest day to be taking photos tbh, the cloud cover was quickly shifting between dark clouds to flat white cloud cover to bright blue skies with sporadic white clouds with the lighting conditions changing every few minutes at times.

Going through the photos today I have noticed that with some photos taken just a second or two apart one will look absolutely fine and the other will have some quite extreme chromatic abberation even if I have changed almost nothing other than maybe zooming in/out a little bit or adjusting my position slightly. I have never had this issue with any other lenses on this camera so I am inclined to think it's an issue with the lens but I am a little concerned it could be the camera sensor itself as I have heard that a failing sensor can cause these problems.

The camera is 2 years old and has taken around 15,000 exposures in that time. But it's by no means a high end camera as it's an EOS 2000D. It has never had any issues like this before but I haven't had chance to go back out and test it with a different lens since I noticed the issue.

So my questions are:

• Is this a known issue with this kind of lens or camera body?
• Is there anything I can do to resolve the issue or is it just something that occasionally happens that I just need to fix in editing
• If it is a failing sensor is that basically the end for this camera or would it still be possible to have it repaired for less than the cost of a replacement (I am not against upgrading to something better but I am currently saving for a trip so would rather not have to fork out for a new camera until next year if possible)

Thanks in advance

Specifically is the USM worth the extra cost?

Looking on the second hand market and there appears to be approx £100 difference between the two in like for like condition. That's not a huge difference given that even the more expensive USM is available at relatively low cost but I don't want to spend the extra if the difference in performance is negligible.

I will mainly be using it for street photography and events where I want to switch quickly between wide and close shots.

As an amateur photographer have always tried to keep my editing process quick and simple. I have just used DPP4 to crop and adjust colouring and exposure sliders. If a photo needs anything more than that I generally don't consider it a keeper.

However, I recently found myself landing an event photography gig for my day job employer and had to use lightroom for the editing as per company P&Ps. I knew it was a much more powerful editing tool than DPP4 but I never used it for my personal photography as I had no interest in paying a subscription for something I would use so infrequently and would not use the majority of the features of. But using it for work I felt a bit uneasy with just how well it recognised all the components of any given photo and the scope of just how much it could alter all of them quickly and easily. Even photos I previously would have just written off and deleted were able to be turned into highly professional looking images for publication. Somewhere along the line it stopped feeling like a photography project and started feeling more like a graphic design project.

This goes beyond just feeding prompts in to create or manipulate images which as almost an entirely separate discussion, as is the environmental and ethical impact of AI usage. What I am talking about here is when does the concept of being a skilled photographer just become irrelevant when even poor quality photos can be turned into professional looking work? I have received some really great feedback for this set of photos with the event organiser telling me how talented I am and honestly I feel like a bit of a fraud. The photos I took were average at best as event photography and photos of people are not usually my thing, I prefer shooting nature and landscape images. But using Lightroom, a piece of software I had very limited experience with, I was able to turn those photos into fantastic looking professional quality images.

Is this really the future of photography? Presumably AI in editing is only going to become more prevalent and more powerful so will requirement to be able to take a decent photo will become less and less? And will that kill off any need for professional photographers and put an end to the concept of photography as an art-form for both amateurs and professionals where refusing to use AI powered editing tools will become nothing more than a self imposed and ultimately pointless limitation that makes no actual difference to wider audiences? Is the final image all that matters?

Even in the years that Slam Dunk has been an organisational disaster (like 2023) I have always had a great time but constructive criticism is a good thing so it is probably worth discussing what could have improved your day at Slam Dunk this year.

My observations are all from SD North

• Cold drinks - trying to get a bottle of water or soft drink at the food stalls was nigh on impossible. Most only had one small fridge and couldn't keep it stocked long enough for the drinks to actually get cold. It would've been nice to be able to grab a bottle of water/coke/etc that had actually been kept cold before buying it and didn't taste like it had been sat out in the sun without having to queue up at the beer tents. Also by about 5pm many of the food stalls were almost completely sold out of soft drinks too. I appreciate this years weather was abnormally warm but surely it would be a good idea to have a couple of stalls that just sold cold soft drinks and nothing else so that people can stay hydrated without having to wait in longer queues at the beer tents or rely on the also quite warm water from the water points.
• Key Club Stage - It was clearly too small for most of the bands playing it. Again maybe this was a factor of the weather and people just wanting to stay out of the sun but it seemed absolutely rammed for every set we saw in there, even the really early ones. And for the later ones even when we arrived 30mins early we still didn't manage to get inside. Given that the monster stage is now outdoors it would probably make sense to re-use the lager tent that used to be in to house the key club stage - As a bonus keep the smaller tent the key club is currently in and relocate it somewhere else to be used as a shelter from rainy and sunny weather. No need to even put a bar or anything in there, just fill it with deck chairs for people to rest and relax between bands.
• More seating - As per my idea for upgrading the key club tent and re-purposing the current tent into a seating area, just more seating in general would be nice. Trying to find somewhere to sit and eat something between bands generally means sitting on the grass which is fine when the weather is dry like this year but when it's wet like in 2024 sitting on the ground is awful. Obviously we don't want the areas directly in front of the stages filled with chairs and tables but there's definitely spaces they could put more seating out, such as in the entrance/holding area which after the area opens remains largely empty for the majority of the day. It would be easy to have some staff put a bunch of deckchairs out there after the initial crowd has gone through to the arena and bring them in again during the headline sets to clear it for the crowds leaving.
• Faster exits - Ever since SD North closed off the second entrance into the arena last year it now takes much longer to get away from the site than it used to. Opening a second exit would massive speed up the slow shuffle out through the one bottleneck exit from the arena we now have.
• Better signage when leaving - Every year going back to the coach park we follow the signs so far and then they just stop leaving us with no indication which direction to go and no staff immediately available to direct us. Trying to recognise the route we came in via 12+ hours ago when it is now dark is difficult enough but this year the path we came in along was actually fenced off when leaving and there was no indication where we should go instead. We ended up having to trek through an unlit part of the woods in the dark.
• Big Green Coach Arrival times - Why are so many of them scheduled to arrive after the gates open?! Our pick up point is only about an hour away from the festival site but our pick up time was 30 mins AFTER the gates opened. This means we generally get stuck in traffic coming in and the queues at the main entrance are much longer when we arrive. Spoke to one of the BGC volunteers and ours wasn't even close to the last bus to arrive with the very last busses often scheduled to arrive up to 2 hours after the gates first open. This also leaves no leway for other unforeseen delays on route. I know some of the BGC busses are coming from very far away but surely scheduling them all to arrive in time for the gates opening would just make everything easier?
• Sound bleed between stages - I think the new layout is great and having both the Second Stage and Monster stage as split stages is great for scheduling the bands but the sound bleed from the monster stage to the main stage and from the second stage to the key club stage was really bad at times this year. Even some of the bands mentioned it during their sets. I am not sure what the solution is short of expanding the site to put the stages further apart - Which I would not necessarily want as one of the best things about SD is how quick it is to get between stages but it would be nice to be able to hear one set without another in the background.

Ultimately these are all just minor gripes and opportunities to improve things

It was a very fun two-parter but it just all felt a bit too sudden and easy as a way to wrap up the show.

Imo they could have made for a much better final season and season finale if they had discovered the transwarp hub at the start of the season and spent the rest of the season preparing to take on the Borg to get home.

This could have involved episodes in which they try to source the resources and tech they need to battle the Borg featuring moral dilemmas about the lengths they will go to in order to obtain what they need.

There could also be Conflict with Starfleet who want Voyager to prioritise destroying the hub over getting home in order to protect the Federation (a "needs of the many episode"). Captain Janeway would initially be ready to follow Starfleets orders causing division amongst the crew. That is when Admiral Janeway from the future would show up with her knowledge of the future (7 of 9s death, Tuvoks illness, etc) to try and persuade Captain Janeway to ignore orders and prioritise getting home

Going into the finale we are still not certain which way Janeway is leaning between getting home and destroying the hub and that is when the traditional Star Trek "Third option" presents itself and they managed to do both.

For me structuring the season like that would have made the ending feel less like a sudden Deus Ex Machina and would have made getting home feel like much more of an emotional moment if we could see the hardships and sacrifices made by the crew as part of the final push to get themselves home. It would also still leave plenty of scope for adventure of the week episodes As not every episode would need to be about prepping to take on the borg. I would think you could hit all the plot points I mentioned in about 6-8 episodes scattered throughout the season.

Or just the introduction of sea and orbital colonies into the main Civ series?

The first Civ game I ever played was Call to Power and just assumed that being able to expand into sea and sky terrain was the norm for the franchise until I played the later games. I have often found the late game can get a bit tedious especially if going for a military domination type win so it would be cool to have to adjust tactics to account for those additional areas.

I have a job that lets me work remotely and would like to be able to (if possible) work from one of the sheds at a local nature reserve once or twice a week during the summer so I can enjoy being outdoors amongst wildlife whilst answering emails etc.

From a technical perspective is this a workable idea to have my laptop running 7-8hrs per day using mobile data from my phone? And if so which are the best/most affordable ways to achieve this?

Many thanks