Honestly I don’t see any value in getting angry about it. The cat is out of the bag, so being mad is just a waste of energy. Are portrait painters still mad that photography got invented? Hopefully not, for their sake.

Yeah it’s bullshit when someone generates an image and tries to pass it off as a photograph, but that’s their problem. Sure they can churn out images that look cool but if someone interviews them, commissions them to do something specific, or looks closely at their work, they’re gonna get found out. Random people posting on Flickr don’t matter, so if they somehow get enough recognition that people start paying attention, their days are numbered.

And, given that ai is best used as a tool in the process rather than the process itself, if someone gets good enough with it that they can reliably produce art with a distinct vision and with realism that can’t be clocked as partially generated, then they’re clearly doing something right.

In the end though, if people are gonna lie about how they made stuff, they’re just digging their own hole. Don’t let it get you down. There’s already enough shitty stuff and negative energy in the world, don’t give up more of your energy getting mad that some losers are lying about their art.

I would strongly suggest not using this photo as too deep an inspiration.

The light trail effect is cool and all but it’s also massively overused. By all means figure out how to do it, and if the venue is ok with flash, take a few like that, but if you spend the whole set trying to get light-trail photos and nothing else, it’s gonna be pretty lame.

FYI, good luck with this question - there have been thousands of threads across countless forums arguing aggressively as to what the concept of equivalent focal length and aperture actually means, because a lot of it has to do with how pedantic you want to get and how detailed you want to get in the comparison. And lord help you if people start talking about the amount of light a lens gathers based on aperture, sensor size, pixel resolution, and so on. That’s an argument that never ends because it gets even deeper into pedantry.

Honestly it’s an interesting discussion and it’s worth reading about, but be aware that there will be a lot of people defending their opinions very strongly, whether or not they’re actually correct. Believe me, it gets spicy, especially with the people who are technically correct but in was that don’t actually matter.

The best way to look at it is simply that lower is wider, higher is narrower. A smaller aperture number means more light and faster shutter speed options, and narrower depth of field.

Multiplying the focal length by the crop factor does help as a shorthand to help you compare with other lenses but it’s basically a simple cheat sheet rather than anything meaningful.

The real best way to do it, for any camera, is to use the kit lens or some cheap equivalent, and actually take pictures with it and get used to what you actually see. Try it and see how you like it, and use that knowledge to guide your purchase decisions. People on the internet will tell you what they think you should think, but ultimately what matters is how it looks and feels to you and how it matches your eye and the physical spaces you have to shoot in.