Joking aside, I suffer from the same affliction. I use zone focusing quite a bit for street photography, but I also use auto focus when the light isn’t great — and I always end up with a shot where the wrong person’s face is in focus. 
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I sympathize with the view that for most people, a better camera is not the best path to becoming a better photographer, but at the same time the expectation that you can do everything in software is misleading.
Sure, post-processing allows you do to a lot. But if the subject moves, multiple shot techniques become increasingly difficult and tedious.
Also, a lot of features trickle down from flagship cameras (better AF, weather sealing, and IBIS are current examples) to enthusiast models. So for a lot of enthusiasts, “getting a better camera” means “getting a camera I can finally afford with features that were previously available in much more expensive cameras”.
That said, Thomas Eisl makes a lot of good points, sensor DR is not something I would get a new camera for these days. It has already trickled down to cheaper models to a large extent years ago. In another video, he makes a case for buying a second hand DSLR, which can also be reasonable for people learning photography on a budget. But MILCs below 1000EUR have become so competitive on other fronts that this really depends on the features one wants to have. For me, weather sealing, IBIS, and small body (around m43) are important enough.
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I had to look that acronym up. Fortunately “Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera” was one of the choices! 
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Not “better” color, just that “full resolution” is actually interpolated, albeit nicely!
Look at this example of a 4 by 4 pixel camera Bayer sensor vs a typical 4 by 4 screen.
The screen has a red, green, and blue led for each pixel, while the sensor has a red, green, or blue photodiode per pixel. The screen thus has a spatial resolution 3 times higher than the Bayer sensor.
The engineer in me had liked to oversample rather than undersample even though it won’t be visible. I promise I will explore this topic further and maybe even contribute a downscaling-based demosaicing algo if I get a high res camera in the future 
The effect should be visible for any resolution though as it’s a matter of your target resolution. I only have a 2K screen now so a 4K sensor is actually enough in that sense.
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Yes I understand interpolation, but interpolation has to happen whether you have many megapixels or few, and so long as the algo is the same, the colour will be the same. (Theoretically, I can see the appeal of a downsizing demosaic algo. Didnt know you had that in mind. Would be interesting to compare results from that vs current method).
There are of course different pros and cons to higher resolution cameras, but I didn’t think a noticeable difference in colour was one of them.
Seeing your example made me think of this post…
Did you see this?? What is your opinion on how the color calculations are handled…
Likely best to respond or post on that thread if you have any feedback so as not to hijack this one…
Yes, essentially.
From the back of my head: the reason why ARRI chose 2.8K horzontal resolution for the Alexa was that after debayer and downsample this was the resolution needed to deliver FullHD with 4:4:4 sampling (video world term meaning full color resolution as opposed to color-subsampling where chroma has half or quarter resolution while luma is still FullHD). So their calculations give a linear dimension increase by about \sqrt2 whereas brute force binning 4 bayer-pixels together would be a factor of 2 like @jandren suggests.
Also there are black and white resolution comparisons from Leica monochrome and bayer pattern Leicas (those are debayered first, turned into B&W and then compared to the monochrome pictures of the same object). The monochrome version is significantly outresolving the bayer pattern camera.
Omitting 2 of the 3 channels per pixels leads to a significant loss in details for each channel.
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I have a serious case of the cravings for an X-T5, but for me it’s the dials (and maybe the tilty screen). I have an X-S10 and although it’s a great camera, I wanted the Fuji retro dials but was unable - or unwilling - to afford the X-T4 at the time. Now that I am deeply in the Fuji ecosystem, I’m ready to commit to a the camera I should have bought. I know I could get the X-T4, but I’m not a huge fan of the fully articulating screen; or I could get the X-T3, but they go for almost the same price as the X-T5 here in Canada, and I might as well get IBIS and better AF for the same price…
The only thing I’m wondering now is whether the 40MP sensor raws will slow down darktable too much.
Other than house maintenance, holidays, kids, bills, food… photography is the only thing I really want to spend my money on. It’s my hobby and passion, simple as that. I cut my own hair now (what’s left of it) and am wearing the same clothes as I did 10 years ago (they have been washed though). My wife says that I was cool once but that I’ve given up trying to look good, and she might be right 
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I process files from a D850/Z7 ii on an almost 10 year old Haswell i5. Having a gpu makes a load of difference. I have a gtx 1050 4gb which is not very powerful but makes all the difference. Its very usable.
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I have a 6700XT which is a modern GPU, but I’ve been having stability problems since 4.2.0. There’s an issue on Github for it, but we’ve not yet got to the bottom of it yet. But it looks to be an openCL problem, which means I sometimes have to have openCL off, and then darktable becomes painfully slow. Hopefully it won’t be an issue forever of course.
Yes I was having random lock up issues a month or so ago and it was a bad driver from nvidia. Pay attention to your driver version and roll back if possible.
Thanks, yes that’s an option I suppose. Part of the troubleshooting involved updating to the latest drivers, and perhaps I’m getting fewer crashes now, but I do still get them occasionally, maybe once every couple of days, but that’s an improvement over the multiple times a day from a few weeks back.
No idea which driver version to roll back to, I’d probably have to go quite far back. Seems to be the crop and rotate/perspective modules that are particularly problematic.
You can also make sure to clear the openCL kernel cache for dt. It should rebuild them on the fly, but just to be safe.
Yes.
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We are off topic. You can safely delete those 3.
I lost track of your issue in GitHub. Without a log of the issue happening, it is hard to pin point to the source. I think there are some improvements to OpenCL on current master since 4.2.1. Maybe give master a try.
I posted a new log yesterday to the issue after a crash happened, but not sure if it was any use. I’ll try the dev Windows version posted by @wpferguson and see if it seems more stable.
Yes, we are off topic, sorry everyone, but thanks to all those giving helpful advice.
To bring it back to the topic then :), as a 'share my way of thinking '. Feel free to poke holes in it :).
I once jumped into the Olympus eco system as a cheap small second camera. I had an opportunity to go for a cheap em-10 mark 1.
I went huntjng for specs and reviews about what I would be missing compared to the mark 2. Turned out I could find little except more ibis axis and more art styles.
So, what would it being to my photography experience. Very little.
Later the em-10 mark3 came out, and again i could find little of added value to really alter my experience.
But the same for the em-5 mark1 and later the mark2.
I would have a bit of a craving for an upgrade , but i would always be looking at 'why did i get this camera and what would this upgrade do to my experience '.
Since all those cameras had basically the same contrast af, none would enhance motion shots of being movies into an interesting place. Later cameras went from 16mp to 20mp, but big whoop , what would that do for my experience?
So a few more mp, or an extra stop on the ibis, or a few more fps, or more resolution on a crappy movie recording , etc… It would all mean nothing for me.
So i kinda made a list for myself that a better evf, good phase-af and maybe handheld high-res and/or subject detection modes would me a worthwhile upgrade. That would really alter the experience of taking photos.
Since then i have been craving the e-m1 mark3 and om-1, but the new om-5 that isn’t otherwise liked also fits the bill.
It kinda helped to get my gear-cravings under control , to not think about ‘wanting something better’, but thinking how much i would notice of it during use , because that’s the feeling that will last for way longer compared to the ‘yay new toy’ feeling that only lasts a bit.
It surprises me in that context, how little difference there is between the Olympus generations , but also between the entry level (em-10) and the midsegment (em-5). I guess people will find other reasons to upgrade , but i was surprised how little there was in here.
Compared to the steps that Sony and Fuji have made in that time , for example (to be honest , Sony APS-C line up has seen very little movement as well ).
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That’s a refreshingly adult way of deciding about gear upgrades!
In my own journey, I have not been able to be so stringent. A Nikon D3000 was replaced by a D7000 when it broke. And a good change that was, for working white balance and just about everything else. Later a supposed sidekick Fuji X-E1 introduced me to mirrorless, quickly replaced by an X-E2, then X-E3, for much faster focusing, less EVF lag. These were meaningful upgrades. Then an X-T2 with weather sealing, followed by an X-T3 with USB-C charging. Less meaningful, also less expensive. Meanwhile, a plethora of compact cameras resolved to a marvelous Ricoh GR, then GR III, for the stabilization and USB-C charging.
If I notice a pattern there, it is that beyond 2015-ish, externalities like USB-C charging and weather sealing tend to rank higher for me than classical specs such as resolution and autofocus speed.
What would it take to replace the X-T3? Sensor stabilization would be nice, I guess, but I don’t actually need it with bright primes or stabilized zooms. I will upgrade eventually, no doubt, when the price is right. Just like when the sale/buy difference between the X-T2 and X-T3 fell below €200. But that’s far in the future.
What would it take to upgrade the GR III? Honestly, I am extremely taken with that little thing, and especially its thoughtful evolution and long-term support. Just last month a rather significant update added a new film simulation, and last year they added an improved focus mode — for a four-year-old camera. Whatever they will eventually announce, I am likely to buy it on trust alone because of that. Although I actually can’t think of many things that would improve it.
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[quote=“bastibe, post:72, topic:35492”]
That’s a refreshingly adult way of deciding about gear upgrades![/quote]
“Externally” I’ve not upgraded much at all but “internally” I’ve desired to (still do), so I can’t claim any purity of motive. One of the big things that keeps me from upgrading is that I can’t personally justify spending money on photography until / unless my images (subject matter and execution) start looking MUCH better than they do now. Plus, my lowly Canon 850D is technically superior to what pros had only a few decades ago, so… Can’t say the same for my glass though!
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