Spring may be arriving, but Ontario is still showing plenty of evidence of winter. Among that evidence: The local deer, desperate for anything remotely resembling food, are unusually bold about getting some from humans.

The camera gives us direct control over many things that, when we're studying a scene with our eyes, are handled automatically and subconsciously.

Most notably, the camera's idea of exposure – i.e. whatever we tell it to expose – gives it a tremendous light-shifting ability compared to our eyes, which always adapt to give our brain the most well-balanced exposure possible for the conditions.

Nowhere is this more obvious than the night sky, viewed here from near Dorset, Ontario in August.

Is there an advantage to designed-in weak links, where a cheap and easily replaced part fails so that a more expensive one can be saved?
In many cases, there is; nevertheless, we shouldn't apply this design philosophy to everything we design.