@AJHenderson Dust on the sensor is terrible. We just got some small industrial cameras so dusty that about ten very distracting dark spots appeared on each image at the same place. Very likely dust got into them when they were temporarily handled without a lens or cap.

@scottbb Yes, I was asking about removing a pole. There's a very annoying lamppost with a big bucket of flowers in a very annoying position. It's blocking the view if I want to photograph the church from the side that I think would look the best.

@scottbb It's this church commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kispest-nagyboldogasszony-0.jpg , but not the angle I want.

@scottbb A shift lens is an interesting idea, but I don't think I'll go that far. I might want to composite a photo from multiple angles though. In fact, I have some lake panorama photos where I should experiment with stitching. Might not work out, but should at least teach me something.

Though what might help with a composite photo of some local buildings from better angles is a taller (and heavier) tripod. I should buy one.

I'll still use this light tripod for travel because it's easier to carry with me of course.

I'll look up the same Rollei brand as this tripod because I'm satisfied with this (in fact I've already bought my brother an identical one).

@b_jonas I highly recommend the pano/compositing effort. If I understand your thinking, it probably won't turn out like you envision. However, you will learn a LOT about the process, and about what works and what doesn't when taking panos. Ultimately, you're going to want to rotate horizontally about the so-called no-parallax-point of the lens. This is also known as the entrance pupil. Take a lens unmounted from a camera, make sure it is stopped down as small as the aperture will go..

... Now look through the front element of the lens, shifting left and right off the optical axis. The depth location of the apparent aperture when viewed from the front of the lens is the entrance pupil. If you can rotate the lens (and by extension, the mounted camera) precisely about this point, the entrance pupil won't shift laterally at all. This means that images taken from this rotation will stitch together without any parallax. This is how stitched panoramas are (ideally) done.

@scottbb One difficulty with compositing in general is that the GUI software for it isn't perfect yet. That matters not only for panoramas, which I rarely want to make, but for composite building photos, like commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kispest-jezus-szive-1.jpg (although I admit in that one I messed up the colors rather than the alignment)

@scottbb And yes, ideally you have to rotate the camera around that, and that can matter for stitching building photos, but for the lake in particular it matters less because there aren't many objects close to the camera.

That said, rotating the head of the tripod does seem to get close enough to that in practice.

@scottbb Also, I'm still doing these building photos with a compact camera, so that particular description won't work.

But the more I photograph, the more I want a camera with a better lens. It's really whetting my appetite, having a good camera where the lens is the weakest element.

@b_jonas the best advice I ever received, was from a guitar instructor right before I bought my first guitar (which was an acoustic): "Buy the best guitar you can afford. Your learning won't be impeded by the limitations of the guitar". I've never reached the limits of that guitar. And I'm pretty sure I've never reached the full limits of my Nikon D800E either. I've been limited by some mediocre, and even good, lenses. But a really nice lens+camera combo — they're better than my techniques are.

@scottbb Yeah.

I won't buy a new camera right now (like within half a year), but firstly my compact is still sort of new, secondly I want to buy a good computer first (expensive stuff that doesn't limit me and will last for several years), and thirdly I can now wait for experiences my brother will have with the camera he'll buy, and even try his camera.