Canon EOS R7 Disassembly and Teardown

I use my phone's camera almost every day for just documenting shit, like receipts, business cards or when I am disassembling something, or other random projects. I love the geo-tagging of photos, along with a date based bucketing and that allows me to easily go back and look shit up.

Nope! The last time I got stung was more than a decade ago now, long before I ever even got interested in photography as an adult, much less found in it an accidental avenue to almost entirely getting over what fear of wasps I had. (And in entire fairness, I should note that the yellowjacket who stung me that time had been blown into my lap through an open car window, and I dropped my hand on her before I knew she was there. Even then I considered her to have acted entirely within her rights - I was just glad she'd happened to fall on her back!)

Wasps have a reputation for being needlessly and boundlessly belligerent, but all I can say is that, over the course of several years now spending as much time in their close company as I'm able, I've found that reputation to be totally unjustified, and wasps themselves to be just trying to get through the day, same as anyone.

It might help that I'm not afraid of them, and thus don't reek of anger and fear hormones in their presence. It's unclear how extensive a theory of mind they have for mammals, but much of their communication and sensory experience is known to revolve around olfaction; given that many mammals will happily if hazardously raid wasp nests in search of nutritious brood, it would be no surprise to learn that wasps recognize the stink of human flop sweat as indicative of a kind of danger they will fight, heedless of risk, to deter.

That hornet was in many ways a special case, though - the first I've ever seen close enough to, and who spent long enough in one place, to even try for a shot. Paper wasps rarely seem to notice my presence, yellowjackets often do but rarely much care, but I could see that hornet was watching me and didn't entirely appreciate my attention. When she decided she'd had enough, she left the tree on a heading that led to a very close pass alongside my head, enough so that I could all but feel the breeze off her wings, and certainly enough to hear quite loudly the markedly deep hum of her flight. Wasps butt and ram as part of both defense and communication, and I took being buzzed as the latter - specifically, as a clear statement that, upon her return, she'd quite rather I be elsewhere. To be clear, I don't think she would have attacked me if I hadn't made myself scarce, but she probably wouldn't have come back to the fig tree with its bounty of both nutrition and ethanol, and it would've been rude of me to make her feel she had to skip it.

I've had many similar experiences - ask me some time how I first learned that fig tree was a highly popular spot with late-season foragers! So I think the problem most people have with wasps has really nothing at all to do with wasps themselves, who don't like to fight any more than anyone else does. But it takes more than one person to not have a fight, and I think humans mostly just can't be bothered to learn not to start one.

I also don't think a setup like the one you describe would be very effective for the kind of shooting I do. For one thing, there'd be no way to control how a given wasp would choose to approach the bait. That might not be insurmountable if autofocus worked well in macro, or at least in macro for me, which it never has with any camera I've tried; it hunts a lot and usually fails to find focus. This seems reasonable enough given what such a use case demands of the AF system, but also means there's no such thing as being "free of focus".

Too, as I mentioned in a sibling comment, neither wasps nor I generally find anything to be dismayed about in being close to one another, so there's no real benefit I can see in physical separation. (The hornet's attention seemed drawn by my flashes much more than by me; it took a while for her and me both to find spots to work, and she only seemed to notice me once I started shooting.)

And if I can already get good exposure levels at f/11 and the sensor's native ISO 64, where's the appeal in being able to add noise or diffraction? If anything I'd want to open the aperture further to take advantage of no longer being limited by sync speed, but even that would come at the cost of precious DoF.

In theory an approach like the one you describe might yield better illumination of (relatively) distant background, and there may be some appeal in that. Fermenting figs are unusually attractive, and in their absence I tend to spend at least as much time following wasps around as I do shooting, so fixed lighting isn't a very feasible option. But with three flash heads I have light to spare, and pivoting one of them to throw light behind the subject instead of on her might work well enough; I just haven't really bothered, because the background being as dim as it is defocused seems to me to help keep the viewer's eye where I want it. But it's at least worth a try to see how a brighter background works out.

I have also thought on occasion about going out with the diffusers that mount to my flash heads, but I never seem to remember to actually put them on when I have time, and I'm never inclined to take the time when I think waiting around might cost me a shot. I do actually like the effect produced by the reflections off wasps' compound eyes from bare flash heads, but again I think it's worth finding out if I like something else better.

Fortunately, I've got all winter to experiment with both techniques, so as to have some idea of what I'm doing by the time next year's foundresses emerge from hibernation and start building.

I own a perfectly functioning 40D from 2007 myself, which I replaced by a Sony A7III just recently, as I hate the fact, that Canon tries to force their customers to buy their own expensive RF lenses.

Of course cameras are impressive pieces of technology. Still I understand the sentiment of the above commenter. My last comment was an overstatement, still there is a substantial chance of a hardware failure.

Same for the old F4 sitting in a shelf, or the D750 that replaced the D700 for my dad. I have no reason to doubt Canon is any different (during a lot of those trips other people used Canon, and those held up just fine as well), nor do i have doubt the new mirrorless cameras will be any different. Unless you dump them for prolonged periods in salt water after having them run over by a truck and store them in a warm and humid environment without drying.