Sony Lounge Thread MKIII (All Sony cameras welcome)

Facing "An Uncertain Future" with my FE 50mm 1.4 ZA. Title is not a reference to the lens, but about my quandary over whether to buy my mom's house or not. Also thinking about the stock market and my efforts to profit from it.

This scene is from beautiful Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. We absolutely loved our camping experience at nearby Ochlocknee River State Park and hope to return next year. Up next month is a camp trip to Vogel State Park in the mountains of northeastern Georgia.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Tjzp​7Y

David Arbogast wrote in post #18842073
Facing "An Uncertain Future" with my FE 50mm 1.4 ZA. Title is not a reference to the lens, but about my quandary over whether to buy my mom's house or not. Also thinking about the stock market and my efforts to profit from it.

This scene is from beautiful Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. We absolutely loved our camping experience at nearby Ochlocknee River State Park and hope to return next year. Up next month is a camp trip to Vogel State Park in the mountains of northeastern Georgia.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Tjzp​7Y An Uncertain Future by David Arbogast, on Flickr

you consider trading futures or options? High leverage is the way to go if you plan on making serious income from the least amount of money.

Charlie wrote in post #18842075
you consider trading futures or options? High leverage is the way to go if you plan on making serious income from the least amount of money.

I'm not trading for today's income...just working on my retirement investments within my IRA. Options trading is not possible within IRAs, but on the plus side I have a good amount to work with, so playing conservative is still getting me positive gains. Even so there are a few leveraged and inverse ETFs I sometimes trade which have more explosive potential.

I've only been doing this since I dumped Edward Jones in late December for costing me a 20% loss in 2018...been learning as I go. So far so good - recovered much of what was lost, but have lots and lots to learn. Wish I had learned to be market savvy from my youth!

David Arbogast wrote in post #18842080
I'm not trading for today's income...just working on my retirement investments within my IRA. Options trading is not possible within IRAs, but on the plus side I have a good amount to work with, so playing conservative is still getting me positive gains. Even so there are a few leveraged and inverse ETFs I sometimes trade which have more explosive potential.

I've only been doing this since I dumped Edward Jones in late December for costing me a 20% loss in 2018...been learning as I go. So far so good - recovered much of what was lost, but have lots and lots to learn. Wish I had learned to be market savvy from my youth!

I'm turning 37 in July and my retirement is really the only thing I want to be strong with for the remainder of my working career. I feel the same way. I wish I got savvy back in my early 20s. I have a friend who did and he continually remarks about retiring at 55 with about 3m in investments.

David Arbogast wrote in post #18842080
I'm not trading for today's income...just working on my retirement investments within my IRA. Options trading is not possible within IRAs, but on the plus side I have a good amount to work with, so playing conservative is still getting me positive gains. Even so there are a few leveraged and inverse ETFs I sometimes trade which have more explosive potential.

I've only been doing this since I dumped Edward Jones in late December for costing me a 20% loss in 2018...been learning as I go. So far so good - recovered much of what was lost, but have lots and lots to learn. Wish I had learned to be market savvy from my youth!

Indeed, I should have learned this stuff when I was younger

I was certain you could trade options with an IRA, as long as you dont short, but yeah, inverse ETF's can get you there. I just never made sense of the PDT rule, even if I had enough. It's just too much to have tied up. My wife traded ETF's for a few years, got her to the Futures game...... really love that style of trading, however I've had better luck with options, it's just less stressful.

I wanted to capture the forest canopy suspended over this pedestrian bridge in the forest at Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. But I also wanted a lower POV to capture a more interesting perspective with the railing. So I mounted up the FE 12-24mm and photographed this at 12mm (I lost a little bit due to cropping from perspective correction in DXO Viewpoint 3).

Also, just cannot say enough how much I am enjoying Topaz Labs AI Clear. Uses impressive AI to intelligently clean away noise and sharpen. I'm using it on almost all my images any more.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/RGrH​ZB

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #18842005
Eye AF for stills, that's great....but say you're doing a selfie vid and move the camera 1-3 feet...you'll go out of focus.
Maybe that is one reason they went with F4
Regardless I'm now looking at Hero7Black.
I'd need a handle and some cage....I don't think cages are waterproof.
Shame. Heck I might just shoot it all on the RX100vi and not fool around with
yet another camera/batteries/charg​er.

Ahh got you now. Seems like an odd decision they made. The GoPro 7 is waterproof to 10m without a housing. You can pick up a handle/stick cheap (me and Charlie use a Chinese one that’s good). You get a cage with the camera to allow you to attach the stick

Still waiting on the refund so i can order my Distagon

But in the meantime

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2en2​s5o

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2e55​UUT

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2en2​s4G

Talley wrote in post #18842102
I'm turning 37 in July and my retirement is really the only thing I want to be strong with for the remainder of my working career. I feel the same way. I wish I got savvy back in my early 20s. I have a friend who did and he continually remarks about retiring at 55 with about 3m in investments.

David Arbogast wrote in post #18842080
I'm not trading for today's income...just working on my retirement investments within my IRA. Options trading is not possible within IRAs, but on the plus side I have a good amount to work with, so playing conservative is still getting me positive gains. Even so there are a few leveraged and inverse ETFs I sometimes trade which have more explosive potential.

I've only been doing this since I dumped Edward Jones in late December for costing me a 20% loss in 2018...been learning as I go. So far so good - recovered much of what was lost, but have lots and lots to learn. Wish I had learned to be market savvy from my youth!

To be fair the S&P Index was negative 6% for the 2018, with -13% or so for the final quarter. The name of the game for most investors should be a strategic buy and hold looking to minimize fees and expenses. A 1% AUM fee or 5% load from funds starts to kill the return over time.

Talley wrote in post #18842102
I'm turning 37 in July and my retirement is really the only thing I want to be strong with for the remainder of my working career. I feel the same way. I wish I got savvy back in my early 20s. I have a friend who did and he continually remarks about retiring at 55 with about 3m in investments.

I think most people in the late 30's wish they could do things better in their 20's. I turned 37 this year as well and after changing jobs and rolling over my 401k, it made me realize how much more it could be if I had contributed more to my 401k. Sure I made the match, but even 5% more would've done wonders. I think to myself that I might be behind the game compared to some, but ahead of the game compared to others, which makes me worry for the rest of the people out there. I read somewhere that 1 in every 3 people have less than $5,000 saved for retirement and they're basically living paycheck to paycheck off of Social Security, which scares the hell out of me. Working in banking for so many years, it terrified me how many people would come in the day after their SS came in to claim their funds and if it was delayed even one day, how much turmoil they went through.

David Arbogast wrote in post #18842073
Facing "An Uncertain Future" with my FE 50mm 1.4 ZA. Title is not a reference to the lens, but about my quandary over whether to buy my mom's house or not. Also thinking about the stock market and my efforts to profit from it.

This scene is from beautiful Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. We absolutely loved our camping experience at nearby Ochlocknee River State Park and hope to return next year. Up next month is a camp trip to Vogel State Park in the mountains of northeastern Georgia.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Tjzp​7Y An Uncertain Future by David Arbogast, on Flickr

It's tough right now David. 2018 overall was flat in terms of growth in the financial markets, but there was a ridiculous amount of volatility. The fundamentals have been signaling correction/recession for awhile now, but nothing cataclysmic has happened so there have been lots of short term opportunities trading volatility despite there being no real growth. But unless you're a day trader going both long and short depending on the intra-day movements of the market and hedging your positions along the way, its tough to know what to do because the mid-term outlook is so shaky.

This is my opinion and I reserve the right to be wrong, but there's just a broad span of risky stuff across the financial markets.
There are lots of small scale causes of worry that the financial markets have mostly shrugged off because nothing cataclysmic has happened (yet?). Yield curve inversion a couple of weeks back was pretty telling if you believe in the fundamentals, but that was largely written off too. Very generally it seems that the markets overall know there is a lot of risk out there, and that something is going to happen, but no one knows what the catalyst will be. There's just a lot of unprecedented stuff happening these days, and its likely that the catalyst will also be something unprecedented and hard to predict. (housing market meltdown in 2008 and tech bust in the 2000 were both unprecedented)

Edit: great images lately David. Good to see you shooting again.

David Arbogast wrote in post #18842132
I wanted to capture the forest canopy suspended over this pedestrian bridge in the forest at Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. But I also wanted a lower POV to capture a more interesting perspective with the railing. So I mounted up the FE 12-24mm and photographed this at 12mm (I lost a little bit due to cropping from perspective correction in DXO Viewpoint 3).

Also, just cannot say enough how much I am enjoying Topaz Labs AI Clear. Uses impressive AI to intelligently clean away noise and sharpen. I'm using it on almost all my images any more.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/RGrH​ZB Bridges Make a Better World by David Arbogast, on Flickr

that’s a cool photo. Is topaz a stand alone for Raw to jpg converter? Never seen it before.

TMaG82 wrote in post #18842259
I think most people in the late 30's wish they could do things better in their 20's. I turned 37 this year as well and after changing jobs and rolling over my 401k, it made me realize how much more it could be if I had contributed more to my 401k. Sure I made the match, but even 5% more would've done wonders. I think to myself that I might be behind the game compared to some, but ahead of the game compared to others, which makes me worry for the rest of the people out there. I read somewhere that 1 in every 3 people have less than $5,000 saved for retirement and they're basically living paycheck to paycheck off of Social Security, which scares the hell out of me. Working in banking for so many years, it terrified me how many people would come in the day after their SS came in to claim their funds and if it was delayed even one day, how much turmoil they went through.

Most people are not in the right place in life to contribute aggressively in their 20's....especially people in their 20's right now because the cost of housing and education is out of control.

AlanU wrote in post #18842281
that’s a cool photo. Is topaz a stand alone for Raw to jpg converter? Never seen it before.

Thanks Alan! I’m using LR as my raw converter...just using Topaz AI Clear as a final touch in my photo editing workflow to intelligently clean noise and sharpen details. Unfortunately I don’t think it works as a PS plugin, which would be my preference, so I have to load up Topaz’ proprietary image editor (which is free) and apply the AI clear there.

Topaz can convert Raw files, I think, but I’ll never use it for that. Like all good software companies, Topaz has a helpful 30 day free trial for AI Clear so anyone can try it out for themselves.

mystik610 wrote in post #18842261
It's tough right now David. 2018 overall was flat in terms of growth in the financial markets, but there was a ridiculous amount of volatility. The fundamentals have been signaling correction/recession for awhile now, but nothing cataclysmic has happened so there have been lots of short term opportunities trading volatility despite there being no real growth. But unless you're a day trader going both long and short depending on the intra-day movements of the market and hedging your positions along the way, its tough to know what to do because the mid-term outlook is so shaky.

This is my opinion and I reserve the right to be wrong, but there's just a broad span of risky stuff across the financial markets.
There are lots of small scale causes of worry that the financial markets have mostly shrugged off because nothing cataclysmic has happened (yet?). Yield curve inversion a couple of weeks back was pretty telling if you believe in the fundamentals, but that was largely written off too. Very generally it seems that the markets overall know there is a lot of risk out there, and that something is going to happen, but no one knows what the catalyst will be. There's just a lot of unprecedented stuff happening these days, and its likely that the catalyst will also be something unprecedented and hard to predict. (housing market meltdown in 2008 and tech bust in the 2000 were both unprecedented)

Edit: great images lately David. Good to see you shooting again.

Thanks for the kind word Carlo!

Sony A7II - Canon 28mm f/1.8 EF lens.