Answers
74 so farQuestions about the four practices on this site. Most were asked by somebody else, in public, and are answered here with a link back to the original thread. The ones marked first-hand are from the work itself.
Common struggles with hard light and camera lighting
Photographers and videographers share their biggest challenges with hard light, including ND filter usage, metering choices, and subject placement.
PhotographyShould you convert RAW stills to S-Log and S-Gamut?
An explanation of why photographers and colourists map RAW still images to S-Log3 and S-Gamut in DaVinci Resolve for video grading workflows.
PhotographyHow darktable workflow guides simplify raw processing
Darktable users report that structured 10-step guides and custom module lists make editing high-volume shoots clear, fast, and accessible.
Video EditingHow to apply one colour correction to every clip
Matching one shot is easy. The thread gave two ways to get that correction onto the rest, and was clear about which one it preferred.
PhotographyHow to approach strangers in street photography
The top answer says do not approach at all. Others describe the opposite, and the disagreement is really about which kind of picture you want.
PhotographyHow to stop flash reflecting off your subject
A photographer fighting flash glare got two incompatible answers from two commercial photographers, and both are worth knowing.
DevOpsCan you build a large front-end without a framework?
Yes, and the thread was clear about what you take on when you do: reactivity, routing and state become yours to build and to keep working.
PhotographyCan the sun damage your camera sensor?
Yes, and the risk depends almost entirely on focal length. What is actually at risk, when it matters, and when the answers said it does not.
CinematographyCan you change ISO settings mid-roll on film cameras?
Learn whether you can adjust your film camera's ISO dial mid-roll and how exposure adjustments impact development.
DevOpsDo homepage carousels actually work?
Almost every answer said no, from people who had tested them. One explains exactly whose problem a carousel really solves.
PhotographyDo lenses matter more than camera bodies?
The usual advice is to spend on glass. The thread mostly agrees, then complicates it in a way worth reading before buying either.
CinematographyDoes a Netflix-approved camera actually matter?
A film student asked whether trading a stills body for an older cinema camera was worth it, partly for the Netflix list. The thread was blunt about it.
CinematographyDoes T-stop exposure change across different sensor sizes?
A breakdown of whether T-stop ratings and light transmission change when using cinema lenses across Super 35 and full-frame sensors.
DevOpsIs it worth keeping your code private?
A junior developer kept every repository private in case classmates stole the work. The thread included someone it had actually happened to.
CinematographyFilming a stage show with one camera
A parent asked how to record a school musical properly. The people who do it professionally agreed the hard part is not the picture.
PhotographyHow to stop the fake smile in portraits
People perform the moment a camera appears. The thread agrees on the cause and offers several ways round it, from distance to a remote release.
PhotographyWhy macro shots miss focus, and what to do
Fine-tuning focus by the ring at macro distances mostly fails. The thread was unanimous about the fix, and it is not a better technique with the ring.
CinematographyHow should a cinematographer charge for crew?
A director of photography asked nine questions about rates, crew markup and quoting. A union cinematographer in Los Angeles answered all nine of them.
PhotographyHow to actually use a histogram
Why photographers trust a graph over the picture on the screen, what the two ends tell you, and the one thing no amount of editing recovers.
PhotographyHow do you expose for the moon?
The moon is a daylight subject that happens to be surrounded by night, which is why cameras get it so wrong and why one exposure cannot hold both.
PhotographyHow to focus when it is too dark to see
Autofocus fails and the viewfinder shows nothing. Practical answers, including one that involves marking your lens in daylight.
PhotographyHow to organise a photo library
The advice that matters is not about folders. It is about doing the tagging at import, because nobody ever goes back and does it later.
PhotographyHow do you photograph rain?
Rain is small and fast and usually invisible in pictures. Every answer came back to the same requirement, and it is not the shutter speed.
Video EditingHow to record very quiet sounds
For sounds too faint for a normal microphone, the answers were about contact mics, self-noise, and knowing when to build the sound instead.
DevOpsIf singletons are bad, what should you use?
The pattern does two things at once, and you almost always want only one of them. Separating the two is the whole of the answer.
DevOpsIs a dark theme better for your eyes?
Research mostly favours dark text on a light background. The more useful answer in the thread is that it depends on the room you are sitting in.
PhotographyIs photography still a profitable business?
Photographers with fifteen and thirty years in the trade disagreed in one thread. What they agreed on is that the niche decides it, not the craft.
PhotographyIs there any reason to use P mode?
Nobody in the thread uses program mode themselves, but it produced two decent arguments for why it exists and one for what has replaced it.
DevOpsLearning front-end when it feels over-engineered
Someone with backend experience found modern front-end overwhelming. The thread's advice was about method rather than tools, which is why it survived.
CinematographyHow a candle-lit scene gets a black background
Lighting a scene on candles alone, and why the background falls to black. A crew answered how they shot theirs, and the reason it works.
Video EditingWhy two cameras still do not match after grading
Two cameras under the same tungsten lights refused to match. The thread found the cause in the camera presets, and a limit set by the codec.
CinematographyOne light, one small room
A corporate interview in an office with no space for a proper setup: one panel, and the window behind the subject doing the second light's job.
PhotographyRaising ISO versus brightening underexposed photos in post
A look at when to raise camera ISO versus brightening underexposed photos in post, considering noise levels and sensor ISO invariance.
Video EditingHow to reduce mouth noise in voiceover
The clicks come from the tongue, not the lips, which is why gear does not fix them. Working dialogue editors on what helps and what they disagree about.
DevOpsHandling UX when scrolling to anchors at the bottom of a page
Solutions from a UX discussion on how to handle anchor links near the bottom of a web page that cannot scroll to the top of the viewport.
DevOpsShould a delete button be red or green?
Red for danger or green for yes? The highest-voted answer rejects the question, and a better one exists that removes the dialogue entirely.
DevOpsShould a toggle show its state or its action?
Play/Pause shows what will happen. A shuffle button shows what is happening. The thread found the rule that separates the two.
DevOpsShould error messages apologise?
Most of the thread said yes, with a reason worth keeping. One answer disagreed sharply, and a third argued the message should not have existed.
DevOpsShould OK come before or after Cancel?
There is no universally right order: the platforms settled on different ones. The answer is to follow the platform rather than your instinct.
Video EditingThe difference between gain and volume
Gain sets how strong a signal is going in; volume sets how loud it is coming out. Confusing them is where most avoidable noise comes from.
PhotographyIs it rude to offer product instead of paying?
A spirits brand asked photographers whether trading bottles for a shoot is insulting. The thread's answer turns on one distinction it kept returning to.
CinematographyWhy daylight film loses two stops under tungsten
The two-stop adjustment on a daylight film data sheet is not about the colour of the light. It is the correction filter, and only that.
Video EditingIs there version control for video projects?
A developer asked why video editing has no Git. The answers explain what editing software does instead, and where the real gap is.
PhotographyWhat actually causes chromatic aberration?
Not the sensor, and not your processing. The thread traced it to the economics of lens design, and to which kind can be fixed afterwards.
DevOpsWhat actually improves your programming?
The highest-voted answers have almost nothing to do with languages or tools, and two of them are about reading rather than writing.
Video EditingWhat does audio compression actually do?
It makes the loud parts quieter, which is not the same as making everything louder. What it is for, and where the sound of it came from.
PhotographyWhat is Rembrandt lighting?
One of the standard portrait setups, identified by a triangle of light on the shadowed cheek. What defines it, and what it is for.
CinematographyWhat to ask before funding someone's short film
Someone offered to fund a relative's first short and asked whether requesting the script was overstepping. The thread was unanimous that it is not.
DevOpsWhat to do with a codebase you inherited
Two hundred thousand lines you did not write and cannot read. The first steps are not about the code, and the thread is emphatic about the order.
DevOpsWhat to say when asked for an estimate
The classic answer is four words long. The thread also contains the best line anyone has produced for deflecting a corridor estimate.
Video EditingWhat does 0 dB actually mean in digital audio?
Three different things, depending on where you see it, which is why the number is confusing. In a digital meter it is the ceiling, not the middle.
Video EditingWhen does a shot not need a sound?
Working sound designers on why silence is rare, why it takes more justification than adding a sound, and what has to be in place for it to work.
PhotographyWhen does full frame actually matter?
The honest answer is narrower than the marketing. Depth of field and low light, and a reminder that the body around the sensor decides as much as the sensor.
PhotographyWhen does manual mode beat aperture priority?
Not for control, since exposure compensation gives you that. The answer everyone converged on was consistency between frames.
PhotographyWhen should you turn image stabilisation off?
The question assumed the answer depends on how far away the subject is. The thread corrected the premise before answering it.
PhotographyWhere do common aspect ratios come from?
Frame shapes were not designed. They are inherited from plate sizes, film numbering schemes and the space a soundtrack needed on 35mm.
DevOpsWhere did the one-return rule come from?
A rule still taught as style was originally about assembly language and manual cleanup. Both of the problems it solved have since been solved elsewhere.
PhotographyWhy are camera lenses round?
Sensors are rectangular, so why is the glass in front of them circular? Manufacturing, optics, and one consequence you see in every photo.
CinematographyWhy classic films used deep focus more than modern ones
Older films favour deep focus and modern films favour shallow. A thread gave two explanations for the shift, one technical and one about audiences.
DevOpsWhy is 80 characters the line limit?
The number comes from a punched card format standardised in 1928. It survived the punched card for a reason that has nothing to do with punched cards.
DevOpsWhy designers and developers clash, and what helps
A thread collected the specific friction points between design and engineering, the fixes people had actually seen work, and two who see no tension at all.
PhotographyWhy fluorescent light ruins fast shutter speeds
Frames shot under fluorescent tubes come back with different brightness and colour. The cause is flicker, and there are two ways round it.
DevOpsWhy is global state such a problem?
Not style, and not purity. It removes the property that lets you reason about a function from its inputs, and it takes testability with it.
PhotographyWhy great views make boring photographs
The scene was extraordinary and the picture is flat. The thread found two causes, and the first one is where the sun was standing.
PhotographyWhy do I keep taking photos I know are bad?
Being able to recognise a weak photograph does not stop you making one. The thread explains why those are different skills, and what closes the gap.
DevOpsWhy interfaces stopped being glossy
Gradients and reflections gave way to flat surfaces. Partly fashion, but the thread named a functional reason the gloss had stopped doing its job.
CinematographyWhy depth of field is not called depth of focus
An explanation of why camera terminology uses depth of field rather than focus, and what field means in photography.
DevOpsWhy do payment forms ask for the card type?
The card number already says whether it is a Visa. The field survives for reasons that are partly historical and partly still valid.
DevOpsWhy people press Clear more than once
Everybody hits the calculator clear button several times. The thread traced the habit to a genuine interface failure that still shows up today.
DevOpsWhy progress bars animate backwards
The stripes inside a loading bar move against the direction of travel. It is deliberate, and the thread cites a study on how much faster it feels.
Video EditingWhy red looks blocky in video
Reds break up on screen more than other colours. The accepted answer is chroma subsampling, though the thread did not entirely agree on it.
DevOpsWhy do large software projects run late?
The best answer says the comparison is wrong: other industries fail too, and the phase we call building is not building at all.
DevOpsWhy is the mouse cursor tilted?
The angle is not a style choice. It comes from the pixel budget of the screens it was drawn on, and two other reasons kept it there.
DevOpsYes/No or OK/Cancel on a dialogue?
The top answer rejects both. Use a verb, because nobody reads the message above the buttons and a verb still makes sense when they do not.