Back in my lab days, where we had about 40 Macs and 120 PCs running the place, we ran into contact issues frequently.

> Several new custom-built high performance AMD PCs momentarily caught fire because they were built by small shops who did not understand the thermals involved when rendering JPEGs flat out, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Their power supply connectors to the motherboard melted, causing shorts, burning the motherboards. Replacing them with high-spec Dells with dual Zeons solved the problem. (If you're going to over-clock an x86 processor and run it flat out, be sure the motherboard can handle the Wattage, and that the cooling is sufficient to cool EVERYTHING under a sustained full load.)

> A bad batch of hard drives in an order of 50 Gateway office computers was ultimately traced to poorly-made connectors that did not contact all of the pins on the drives. Gateway had to replace the wiring harnesses and the drives in 50 computers!

> Bad memory slots in six Power Mac G3 computers led to early failures. This was a known problem that Apple fixed by replacing the motherboards. They were gold-plated connectors that just didn't grip the memory DIMMs! Oddly, the same one of four slots in all six Macs was defective.

> We had a dipstick in IT who built 12 servers for our four labs, from off-the-shelf parts. The parts were good, but he was a klutz and didn't seat the various cards and connectors properly. He actually broke several cards — two network interface cards and a drive controller card, and damaged some cables. Three of the four servers in our lab (the others were in three other labs we had then) appeared to function normally, until we needed the data for production. It was CORRUPT. The fourth server never did work. The local IT managers in all the labs determined what had happened, and the culprit was summarily ushered out the door by the beleaguered IT director. $156,000 later, we had HP servers that worked.

I wish I had five bucks for every bad, loose, broken, incorrectly wired, corroded, or otherwise faulty connection I've seen over the years. I'd buy my wife an expensive dinner.

Yes, the outlets in schools are on separate circuits. But if they are fed from the same 3-phase 120/208 panel as the kitchen equipment, there can be (and often were) issues. When you have the same problem in the same school on multiple occasions, with different photographers and different equipment, you see the patterns. This was a problem we found most often in schools built in the 1950s and 1960s.

Back when I was an AV producer, I had the same issues with multi-image slide projection equipment. My new production studio was in a yearbook printing company. The breaker sub panel feeding my area was fed from a larger panel in our book cover production department, where they had big embossing and foil stamping presses, both of which had thermostatic heaters AND big starting capacitors on their motors. Every time they would start a production run, my idling slide projectors connected to dissolve controllers would start randomly flashing their lamps and occasionally cycling. That was despite using 1800 Joule surge protectors on everything. After a couple of months of that nonsense, I called our building engineer into my office and asked him to take a look. He knew exactly what was happening, and had the electrician re-route the line coming to our area so that it had a more direct route to the transformers outside the building. Problem solved.

Wow, well done! Spending 30 years working anywhere is rare in 2024. B&H is among the most respected equipment dealers in the world, largely due to the levels of expertise, honesty, and integrity of its employees. I am sure you were an important part of that team. Kick back and enjoy!

Speed has nothing to do with physical size of the card. Micro SD cards can be just as fast as SD cards of the same class.

Murphy and his stupid law is lurking over your left shoulder...

Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean he's not out to get you.

When I worked in the portrait lab, one of my assignments was to back up our photo consultants who had to contact customers and report on problems with their jobs. We had a running list of the top 50 failures, errors, and problems with jobs. In the film days, "problems with flash sync cables" was in the top 20. Joining that top 20 in the digital age were "Problems with flash memory media," and "Dirty power line in elementary school "cafetoria" We told photographers never to plug in their computers, cameras, and flash power packs anywhere near the wall between the kitchen and the cafeteria eating area. When those deep fat French fryers and ovens cycled on and off, the spikes flew...

I wired a radio station in my early 20s. The chief engineer taught me a very valuable lesson: When confronted with a choice of more or fewer connections in any circuit, it is always a SAFER bet that the circuit with fewer connections will be more reliable! Connectors, switches, and cables are the most likely failure points in electronics.*

I hate those damned adapters. I've been screwed twice when my kids loaned me SDXC Micro cards in an adapter. They corrupted one job and outright failed to mount properly on another. NEVER AGAIN.

I do not scrimp on cards. If a device CALLS for a Micro SD card, I'll use one, but I'll use the Micro SD slot on my high speed card reader, rather than put the card in an adapter to read it. I simply won't use a Micro SD in an SD adapter.

*Static electricity and AC power surges (spikes) come second. Bad connections are often responsible for those AC power line spikes! THINK: "back-wired" AC receptacles on outside walls of homes built in the last 40 years or so… Moisture from condensation causes corrosion to start. That builds up a resistant film that leads to arcing, pitting, and those power spikes that damage electronics. The gripping fingers in the backs of those cheap outlets fail due to metal fatigue and relax their grips on the wires. I've replaced dozens of them over the years, always using the screw terminals of higher quality receptacles when I do.

ƒ/stop is a fraction. It is the focal length of the lens divided by a number.

For a 50mm lens, 50/4 = 12.5mm diameter, the ACTUAL APERTURE for f/4 on a 50mm lens.

For a 100mm lens, 100/4 = 25mm diameter, the ACTUAL APERTURE for f/4 on a 100mm lens.

The practical reason we use f/stops and not actual diameter is to equate the amount of light passing through the lens. f/4 on a 50mm and a 100mm lens is roughly the same. There are minor differences due to the number of glass elements, coatings, manufacturing tolerances, etc., but for most purposes, f/4 is f/4 is f/4, unless you are trying to match multiple cameras together. In that case, you need those very expensive ciné lenses calibrated in T/stops, where T is the f/stop adjusted for actual light transmission.

I'm a huge fan of Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Bennie Goodman, Sinatra, Billie Holliday, and so many more from the 30s and 40s. But I will listen to just about anything. High Point where I live is home to the John Coltrane Jazz and Blues Festival, each Labor Day Weekend. We'll be there again this year. And I'm an avid rock listener. At Davidson College in the early '70s, we had a student-run FM station. I was the operations manager. We played classical, jazz, blues, folk, funk, rock, hard rock, acid rock, punk, a smidge of country, trance, dance, disco, big band, soul, comedy, show tunes... pretty much whatever. If it was interesting and clean enough for airplay, we played it.

Lately, I'm a huge fan of three classically trained kids who've been playing rock since they were 7, 10, and 12. They just played to sold out crowds across Europe and the UK, and sold out 10,000 seats at a concert in Mexico City — to be held in February of 2025 — in one hour. The story of how three little bilingual Mexican Catholic school kids would revive rock music for Generation Z is an inspiration and a half. It's a deep rabbit hole of a story full of positivity and hope.

https://youtu.be/s7iQG0ug4HI? (documentary)
https://youtu.be/pj5ue3M-v6o? (TEDx Talk at University of Nevada)
https://youtu.be/s6b_FgQnXL8? (live performance)

Frank was a very prolific 20th Century composer of alternative rock, jazz, Neo-classical, jazz-rock fusion music, and off-beat humor, and was one of the most famous musicians from the Laurel Canyon, California music scene in the 1960s-'70s. He was quite the social critic, too, often poking fun at politicians and polemic figures from all walks of life. For more, look him up on WikiPedia.

Many who follow modern music consider Frank to be one of the most important musical forces of the last 100 years. I've listened to his music since 1966. He died in the early '90s of prostate cancer.

1) In 2024, all brands are good for something and are reliable and well made. Buy the brand that makes a model with the features you want and need.

2) Mirrorless. The dSLR is essentially dead now. No new R&D is going into dSLR production.

3) Yes. Refurbished and gently used gear gives you the same camera for a lot less money. Refurbs from the factory carry the same warranty as new. Used gear from KEH, MPB, Adorama, B&H, or Roberts UsedPhotoPros generally carries a six month or 180 day warranty.

Do your OWN research to see what is available at various price points. High quality images can be made with almost any new-ish camera. So Buy the features you need at the price you can afford and get out there with it.

YEP. Classic Zappa. It's along the lines of the Nike slogan, "Just Do It."

That is an important point. Mirrorless full frame and APS-C/DX cameras do not solve the problem of big, heavy lenses.

To have a balance between camera size, weight, and heft, and lens size, weight, and heft, nothing beats Micro 4/3 bodies from OM Systems and Panasonic Lumix. Micro 4/3 cameras share a lens mount, so there are over 100 lenses from OM Systems (formerly Olympus), Panasonic Lumix, Panasonic Leica, Tamron, Meike, Voigtländer, Laowa, and others. They range from 1/2 to 1/4 the size, bulk, and weight of APS-C and full frame lenses of equivalent purpose.

There are trade-offs to smaller format sensors, but from my perspective, they can be worth it unless you cover extreme sports and wildlife.

In the 1970s-'90s, I had a wealthy aunt who had lived in Chicago suburbs most of her life. She had a condo in Jupiter, FL, which she occupied mid-October through mid-April, and a condo in Hinsdale, Il, where she lived the rest of the year. But she couldn't resist flying back and forth all the time to see friends in both places.

At the Carolina beaches, we can always tell who the Canadian tourists are. They're swimming in the ocean without wet suits at Spring break in early April.

Wealthy Floridians have lots of summer homes in Western NC. Real estate prices have sky-rocketed there since the 1970s.

I would not look back. I'd get the Zfc if I were in your position. Yes it costs more. All your Nikon lenses will work with the FTZ adapter. Most third party lenses should work:

https://www.zsystemuser.com/z-mount-lenses/z-mount-adapters/ftz-adapters/ftz-compatible-tamron-lense.html

https://www.zsystemuser.com/z-mount-lenses/z-mount-adapters/ftz-adapters/ftz-compatible-sigma-lenses.html

So would I, and I'd never return to a landline or a dumb mobile phone.