practice, knowledge of the sport to inform you where you should be looking… and as someone who regularly says it is not about the gear… in this instance it very much is. More AF points, more ‘cross type’ active sensors, better AF tracking, and of course the FPS, not to mention long and very fast (large aperture) pro lenses, which further aids the AF in successfully locking and tracking

for personal… card dumps are dated. Ideally they are separated by events and the folder named appropriately. I remember places and events more than dates. I ALWAYS include the date in folder names as attributes can change. eg 'Photos - Tasmania Trip 2022.02 (year first for sort order)

for work… similar but Job number, customer name and date - this worked well for a lab

vid, pics in separate sub folders and ‘selected’ in another folder, usually RAW output only.

I recently digitized and archived my entire collection… and my parents. Duped and backed up. It feels so good!

Phoness are great cameras, but this is one of their weaknesses. Having a wide angle lens gives a wide view and pushes the background even further away. That means you are best offsetting it with ensuring the composition leads the eye as u/Sweathog1016 illustrates, or something of interest is in the foreground. Exposure is also more tricky to get right for the whole frame. The advantage to a DSLR here is using a long telephoto lens will compress the field/frame, making distant objects larger and loom over the foreground… I think this is what you are seeing and missing https://www.iphotography.com/blog/what-is-lens-compression-in-photography/

also, how fricken good is the human eye/brain at imaging… amazing stuff

fast pro lenses. Aside from large apertures the coatings and quality of glass add a hard to define extra vibrance to the shots… sharpness, contrast etc

full frame sensors with good low light and noise performance

There are distinct advantages to the pro gear. Whether it justifies the cost depending on your use, is a different story. imo the majority of low-mid range gear does an excellent job for most applications.

sorry, but the majority of people no longer see the value of the photo, few can appreciate the skill in getting a decent pro photo… or even just a basic event photo. Unfortunately it’s a side effect of the digital era… camera phones that do a brilliant job (under typical conditions only), and the very short term nature of the image. For most… an image now only has value so long as it’s trading on their feed. I’m surprised you have not encountered mums thinking they can just use your santa clause and setup to take a pic on their smartphone… so don’t need to pay anything. It’s certainly not the industry I entered… can hardly be called an industry now. Sadly I have watched it’s slow painful death, especially on a local level, as I was part of it.

It’s a shame it is so inappropriate… woulda loved to make an album of kids just freaking at Santa. I was shocked there were so many. Almsot as shocking as it was hard to find a half decent santa. I’m still wondering at this point if Bad Santa was a movie or a documentary

depends on the cameras tech… AF mostly uses phase detection (contrast), and is attuned to vertical lines. So… AF REALLY struggles with low contrast and horizontal lines. Manual focus is a must. Higher end cameras can use a more active focussing system or ‘cross type’ sensors that gets rid of the 'horizontal line probelem.

Trap focussing… eg shooting Formula 1, you want motion blur int he tires, maybe use the panning technique to blur the background a bit as well… you don’t want active AF on lower end cameras, so you manually focus in advance and shoot the car as it passes.

times where the foreground insist on locking your AF, but you want to actually be focuses well past it.

many lenses focus past infinity. If you a re shooting something unusual and the camera struggles to focus, pulling it backa tad can produce sharper result.

Hyperfocal point - Google it for details, but it is the sweet spot of a lens that gives the maximum depth of field for a focal length/aperture combo. It is a ‘virtual’ point in space you need to set manually. eg an object at 1meter… I want everything to infinity as sharp as possible, so my perfect hyperfocal distance may be to focus… 1.3m. (many older lenses had markings on the lens for this)

Something often forgotten… your focussing screen is not made for manual focus, it’s why it is seemingly impossible, especially if your eyepiece is not set to the right diopter for your eye. This is where in a typical DSLR you would look to change the screen (if it has that option) to a split screen, which is a manual focus aid, not unlike a rangefinder.

Best diopter adjustment method btw… remove your lens in a cleanish environment, then adjust it using whatever markings are on the screen. That way it’s more accurate and actualyl set to the screen. Doing it with the lens on is much harder

I’m old school (hence lots words to make a point lol), but gotta say… AF has indeed come a long way and can be relied up mostly. Especially in midtier to high end cameras with extras AF points that have the cross-type sensors and can work under lower light and smaller apertures. That said… a DSLR will never be able to focus as accurately as a decent rangefinder camera… and it shows to a trained eye. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in bench tests too. Take a DSLR and fous on an object 3 or 4 x, then do it witht he rangefinder… the DSLR will vary each time (slightly), whereas the rangefinder will consistently give the same result (in trained hands)

I hope that diatribe helps