I normally post photos of flying ducks I capture with photography gear in the photo section. Those are hard earned trophy shots captured afield with crazy expensive and specialized photography gear. Since there is a lot of buzz about Ai images and deep fakes, I thought I'd post a few images I created today with Midjourney, an Ai image tool. The new v5 version of Midjourney does hands much better than previous versions so it's getting much more difficult to tell real images from Ai generated images.

All three images are very similar to ones I've taken along the journey. The technology is at a point where just because you see something, doesn't mean it's what you think it is... Curious what y'all think about them.

Neat pictures, no clue if one is AI.

Stud looking Lab!
Gorgeous woman.or women.

Question looking at buying a camera, the last nice one I had was a Cannon EOS 35mm film camera.

Bang for the buck, which is a better camera, Cannon or Nikon or?

Reminds me of David Mann's stuff.

Thanks for the comments. I've been playing with Midjourney, Dall-E2 and Scale Diffusion. Lots of fun. What do y'all think of the trout pics? Ai prompt art is fun - especially for those of us that can't draw. Now you can... Thanks Ai

It's really strange how it can do so many things correctly, but putting five fingers on each hand is just too difficult.

Could ya send that hot blonde picture to your 3D printer?

If you are talking about the photog pic, her pinkie is wrapped up underneath the other fingers on that hand





Weird science that stuff..only problem is it creates ICMBs and that might not be seen in a good light these days

If you are talking about the photog pic, her pinkie is wrapped up underneath the other fingers on that hand



But the thumb on that hand is incredibly long…..

And appears to be fused with the camera.

The top.of her pinkie is behind the other fingers, but it doesn't have a knuckle or base. Hands don't bend like that.

Thanks I've shot that lab shot a 1000 times in real life. I was pleased with how the fake one turned out. The dog collar is a tad screwed up or missing below, but not enough to not be an unusable shot for the web.

Regarding the camera question, I've shot both Canon and Nikon, mostly Canon for the past 20 years but when it recently came time to refresh my gear, I decided to go mirrorless and after a lot of soul searching, I decided on Sony.

As far as best bang for the buck, currently you can get a steal on Canon and Nikon pro dSLR deals that cost a small fortune a few years ago that are now a fraction of the price. I put some specific examples in the photo section in a post about Waterfowl Photo Tips. I basically wouldn't encourage most people to buy any new dSLR gear because everything is going mirrorless and that is disrupting dSLR prices and killing the dSLR preowned marketing. Great for buyers, terrible for sellers.

There are great deals on preowned dSLR bodies and lenses now so if you wanted a fast 400, 500 or 600mm prime with a limited budget, now is the time to buy one. On the other hand, if you don't need the super fast glass, meaning f/2.8 or f/4 for low light wildlife or sports shots, then I highly recommend the Sony 200-600 lens that is designed for mirrorless Sony cameras. It's the best bang for the buck for wildlife shooters on a budget. The Sony lenses are some of the best I've shot with and the Sony 200-600 is nearly flawless. Match it with the best Sony mirrorless camera, either new or preowned that you can afford and you won't have any regrets.

Where would you recommend shopping for used equipment?

I keep looking at that lab, and I'm still not convinced it isn't a photo.

Ironically you somewhat answered the question yourself. While hands are complicated in general, part of the issue is training. Nearly everyone says humans have 5 fingers so it has billions of inputs that makes it think humans should have five fingers per hand but we really have four fingers and a thumb.

Also when learning, it ingested billions of images so it gets a lot of static things down very well but hands are in so many different positions it struggles with properly learning hands and understanding how they function. This will likely soon improve.

The extended thumb on the camera is just Ai showing how it would have humans evolve or how it would build a robot human that needed to hold the camera a certain way. A lot of it what it does is based on logic and incorrect assumptions. Also, while it still struggles with hands, trying to put say a fishing pole in a hand is very difficult. The images I've struggled with the most are fishing related or anything where the model is holding something.

Also, let's not be in too much of a hurry to fix the hand bug. Personally I think it's a safeguard because we don't want it to have hands to catch us with when it starts to spawn. All joking aside, it is so much better than it was at both hands and teeth. It is super fun to play with but also frustrating. I'm writing very detailed prompts and sometimes, even with a reference image, it just doesn't do what you want it to. That said, I'm starting to be able to create things with it that I'm very pleased with.

The black lab turned out well. It didn't do as good of a job when attempting to recreate my yellow or red fox yellow lab. I'm still trying to train it to improve that.

Regarding used camera gear, LensRental.com is a good place to look for rental as well as preowned gear. Dive into the site for make model and you can see both rental and buy price. The available preowned for purchase inventory comes and goes but worth checking as they provide reliable inspection reports. The owner does a great job taking gear apart and showing it on his channel. Very knowledgable. They have a really good reputation in the industry. FB marketplace for local pick up is the most active. Feel free to DM me if you have any gear questions.

Wow - nice work! Your skillset displayed in this thread gives me a whole new perspective in viewing your other images.