bob_flood1

Unless the zoom feature is important, I suggest considering the 300 PF plus 1.4X and 1.7X teleconverters. I use this kind of setup to get 300, 420, and 510 mm capabilities with excellent image quality. I have sacrificed the convenience of a zoom, but have found I rarely miss a shot because I'm changing the lens setup.

How are you traveling, and how much time do you have? For non-landscape shooting, the old Kennicott copper mine complex in McCarthy could be interesting, but it's off the most direct route from Tangle Lakes to Valdez. That's where how you are traveling and how much time you have become important factors. How do you plan to get from Valdez to Anchorage?

Visitor Centers. The rangers get information from each other and various visitors to the park all day long. Bears, moose, elk etc are creatures of habit. If they found good eating at a particular spot today, there's a high probability they'll go there again tomorrow. This approach works better in the morning - animals that return to the previous day's spot and are disappointed, or that exhaust the desirable food, will wander off as the day goes on.

If 500 or 600 mm is longer than you want right now, Sigma and Tamron both offer a 100-400 mm lens with stabilization. I suggest you search for reviews of both. I agree that the older 80-400D (screw drive) is to be avoided these days. Mine is a very good 80-300, not much of a 300-400. I shoot with the Nikon AF-S 300 f4D, a version older and heavier than the PF, but really good optically. I use a 1.4X TC to get 420 mm, and a 1.7X TC to get 510. Not as convenient in the field as a zoom, but awfully good optically.

With only 500 clicks since 2021, it's clear that you don't rely on the D500 routinely, so I concur with the suggestion offered by Mr Halliwell. The ultimate on/off switch is a battery removal. Carrying a couple of extra batteries when you take the D500 out allows you to power on and off when you want. If the camera operates correctly when powered up, that old saying about "if it works" seems to me to be the applicable rule.

Companies also take out "preemptive" patents. Nikon's patents for 400 and 600 mm PF lenses may be their move to prevent a competitor from patenting such lenses. This new patent may be the result of research into a new sensor that turned out to not have a current application, but Nikon sees an opportunity for it in the future. Companies patent new ideas for a wide variety of reasons, and many are not related to plans for a new product in the near future.

The plaintiff in many (maybe most) lawsuits is chosen by the plaintiff's lawyers less for their "blame" or "guilt" in the matter and much more for their ability to pay. Nikon can submit a brief to the court claiming that, having licensed the software in good faith, they are wrongfully accused and the company that licensed it and accepted money for that should be the defendant. Whether that is successful depends on the judge - there are way too many cases where a judge, for reasons unknown, has allowed a lawsuit to proceed as filed. If that happens, it becomes Nikon's decision to estimate whether they can win in court, and whether it will cost more to win than to settle. Quite often, a ruling to include a bystander as a defendant gets overturned on appeal, but all that costs money and poor publicity, since most of us humans tend to think "guilty until proven innocent." There was a company that manufactured child safety seats for automobiles, and after the seat failed in a number of accidents, the parents sued the manufacturer, who, by that time, was penniless, and the supplier of the raw plastic from which the seats were made (a large corporation with money). The judge allowed it, and the plaintiffs won a huge judgement. On appeal, the plastic supplier was removed from the lawsuit and all liability.

The idea that Canon would abandon the DSLR market and all the existing owners of their DSLRs doesn't surprise me at all. Canon has a long history of moving on to new hardware ideas and turning their backs on the hardware owned by their customers. There have been several changes in camera body/lens mount/focus systems since the 1960s in which Canon's new design would be completely incompatible with legacy lenses. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Nikon has gone to great lengths and undoubtedly considerable cost to make sure that their product line contains bodies that can use legacy lenses. I don't know of any other manufacturer that has been so adamant about making sure a 50 year old lens of their making will work on a body manufactured today without modifying the lens or using an adapter.. For Nikon to now abandon the F-mount and the large population of Nikon users with legacy lenses would require a rather dramatic change of personality. That, of course, doesn't mean they plan to introduce new DSLRs - they can maintain their tradition simply by continuing to manufacture at least one body that uses the F-mount. But I also see a relatively easy pathway for Nikon to take new features (hardware and software) that have been developed for the mirrorless systems AND that can be easily adapted to work in a DSLR as a way to introduce new DSLR models while putting all their research and development money into the mirrorless hardware. The difference (to me, at least) is that Canon has shown no loyalty to their existing customer base while Nikon has been diligent about keeping their customers' lenses useful decade after decade.

Ed's advice is very good, but only helps if you have access to AC power. Another approach is a 12 volt charger. I have a couple of 3rd party chargers that have an AC plug that folds down out of the body of the charger. But each charger also comes with a 12-v car adapter so it can be plugged into a port in an automobile. The brand I have is Premium Tech, and both have worked just fine for around 10 years, including in several European countries.

"Nikon didn't make the batteries some other companies did. Why couldn't these companies make better batteries than those they make for Nikon?" Since the development of lithium batteries, there hasn't been any breakthroughs in energy density capabilities, which means that no one's lithium battery can store more energy than someone else's lithium battery of the same volume. In that situation, better battery life would have to come from better energy usage and battery management, which is not a battery function - it's a camera function. The only way to get longer battery life in your camera would be to fit a larger battery, which, of course, can't be done. Various manufacturers can also offer products of varying quality - if Nikon is using the best materials, then third party batteries can't store more energy, but they could store less. That's one risk when buying a third party product. Based on what I have read, that doesn't seem to be the case - differences among the manufacturers actually look more like variations from the mass production line than inferior design or materials. Nikon batteries do have some circuitry that connects to the camera and allows data to transfer between the camera and battery. Nikon doesn't release it's autofocus designs and software to other lens makers, forcing them to reverse engineer their lenses to work with Nikon bodies, and I expect the same is true for batteries. So another factor in battery performance will lie in how good a job of reverse engineering each manufacturer does to get its circuitry to work with Nikon bodies.

"I reiterate that although O-rings are a common and good solution on many cameras, they may not work on the FTn meter, which uses two batteries, and has its positive contact on the side, not the end. Although that side contact is common to the chassis of the meter, including the screw-on cap, the label and painted threads make poor contact with the end, and there is no spring on the cap. A conductive ring on the top battery is reliable, but without that you may need to use tinfoil or the like to get good contact with the side terminal." A learning experience for me! I have a couple of Nikkormat FTNs, and each uses a single battery in which the hearing aid batteries work well. And the O-ring idea has also been a success. But never having owned an F with FTn meter prism, I defer to your expertise. I've never heard of a design with a flat, circular battery using edge contact, and am not sure how it would work, but facts are facts, whether I understand them or not.

If the light meter still works, there's a battery issue. A meter from that era used a mercury battery. As an alkaline battery is used, it's voltage drops. Devices that use alkalines are designed to cope with the decreasing voltage and still function as intended. Mercury batteries produced constant voltage, which is why they were so popular among camera manufacturers. Using an alkaline in place of a mercury battery in a light meter will cause constantly changing voltage and therefore constantly changing inaccuracies. Zinc-air hearing aid batteries (Wein batteries) also produce constant voltage. I used them in my Nikkormats before I went digital, and I got anywhere from 1 to 3 months from each battery, depending on my camera use. A package of 5-6 of the hearing aid batteries cost me $4.95US back them, so the battery expense was negligible. The bonus is that hearing aid batteries are available in just about every pharmacy everywhere. They are generally smaller in diameter than the camera's mercury battery they replace. I found an O-ring in a local hardware store's assortment of O-rings that was a great fit in the battery compartment to keep the hearing aid battery centered in its compartment. As others have said, you got a great gift. The Nikon lenses are excellent, the Soligors not so much. Send the film to the Smithsonian, get some 21st century film, and go shooting! Have fun.

Something to add to the "test within 72 hours" issue - to avoid quarantine, the test must conducted by a lab approved to do the test BY THE STATE OF HAWAII. Just because the lab is approved in your state doesn't automatically mean Hawaii has blessed that lab. I know people who arrived in Hawaii having been tested by a lab approved in their home state of Utah only to find that lab was not approved by Hawaii, and they were turned away.

First, get travel insurance. The move to relax restrictions might well result in an upswing in virus cases (it has in other countries), and may lead to re-imposing restrictions. Insurance to cover any commitment that can't be cancelled certainly seems like a good idea. Be sure to get in writing (print?) and understand your hotel cancellation policies. Trying to see more than 2 islands in 10 days will make for a disappointing trip - between travel time and packing/unpacking, it will cost you most of a day to change islands, so the more islands you go to, the less time you will have to see them. Kauai is the most scenic for my nickel, but everyone has their preferences. The Napali Coast (we did an evening dinner cruise along the coast) and Waimea Canyon are both excellent. The lighthouse at Kilauea isn't open every day - check online or with your hotel for their schedule. The famous big surf in Hawaii comes from the north and is a winter phenomenon - the surf will be smaller and come from the south and southeast in the summer. The surf will still offer good surfing, and the beaches on the southeast side of Kauai will be very active up to the time school starts. The area around Princeville is good, too - the mountainside overlooking the community gets the most rainfall per year on earth - lots of waterfalls up there. Maui - nice hotels along the west coast around Kaanapali, north of Lahaina. The famous Road to Hana has hundreds of corners in around 40 miles, a number of waterfalls that may have swimmers, and good coastal views. We found one and only one restaurant in Hana - we found a hot dog stand on the beach and ate there. Be cautious driving back in the afternoon. Lots of people who live in Hana work in the Kahului area, and will be driving home at speeds that can be quite frightening (they drive like they own the corners). We didn't do much on the Big Island - my wife wanted to stay at a "destination resort" on one of the islands, so we stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa and didn't see much else in those three days. Oahu is interesting. The beach at Waikiki was busy with lots of surfers. The shape of the bottom makes the waves rise and break rather far out from the sandy shore - my 300 was inadequate for getting surfer shots I liked. The Arizona Memorial is unique. The battleship Missouri is docked nearby on battleship row on Ford Island - the surrender was signed on the Missouri. So the ship and the Memorial are the start and end of WWII. Dole has an enormous plantation about halfway between Honolulu on the south shore and the island's north shore. They offer tours and exhibits - mildly interesting. The famous surf beaches are all on the north shore (Banzai Pipeline, Sunset Beach, etc), but the surf in July 2014 was as flat as my pool. Around the corner on the northeast side of the island is not tourist country - it's local residential. But it's beautiful, with an abundance of kids playing the surf, an interesting shoreline, etc.

Wayne's recommendation of a catamaran has another benefit. If motion sickness can be a problem, the dual hull design of a catamaran rocks less than a single hull boat.

Actually, you can do both - Juneau is a great place to get a whale watching cruise. The cruises go out into the channel, and the many cruise operators cooperate on sightings and help each other get to where the whales happen to be. Some cruises are just a couple of hours long, while others are longer and can include lunch. Google/Bing searching should show you your options.

I think that the decision about whether there will be a D7 will be determined by the pros' response to the predicted Z9. If pros don't find it adequate, Nikon would probably make a D7 with a Z9 sensor, best available autofocus etc until they can engineer away the pros' complaints about the Z9. Which makes me think that the D6 may be the last of its kind unless Nikon needs a D7, in which case the D7 will be the last. As for entry level, I see a potential emerging market that might get Nikon to keep at least one line alive. The generation of youngsters who have turned up their noses at DSLRs and say they can do everything they want with a cell phone may change their tune when they see the photos being taken of kids sliding into second base or saving a penalty shot using a DSLR. That generation is having kids, and as their kids get into more and more activities, their parents may see the shortcomings of a cell phone and want to try a more capable camera.

I suspect that the degree of acceptance of the Z9 among pros as a suitable upgrade to the D6 (for sports and faster wildlife) will heavily influence Nikon's decision. The Z9 promises more pixels combined with a faster frame rate, made possible largely by the new stacked sensor design and the absence of a moving mirror assembly. If those pro users find the ergonomics or some other aspects less friendly than the D5/6 they presently use, we may see a D7 with the new sensor - it could offer the increased pixels and a frame rate faster than the D5/6 but not as fast as the Z9. So the business decision should be based on how many D7s Nikon thinks they can sell.

I have a suggestion - a version of my own non-professional backup idea. As an amateur, my tolerance for the risk of losing my images isn't isn't like that for a pro whose livelihood depends on those images. I use my own backup method and store my data on duplicate disk drives kept at two homes. I have my images sorted by year, all stored on a 6 TB drive I bought a few years ago. Each year's files are duplicated on a smaller drive (each smaller drive can hold more than a single year's data). The process goes like this: I have this year's images on my computer's internal drive and on the 6 TB backup. Every previous year's file are stored on the 6 TB drive in my home and on a smaller drive that is stored at my sister-in-law's home. Thus I have separated duplicate storage for all previous years, but the current year's data are at risk of a single failure event (like your unfortunate fire - I can't imagine the difficulties and personal losses that you have endured). Each year in January, I create a new folder for the new year's files, make sure the previous year's files are up-to-date on the 6 TB drive, copy that year's files to one of the smaller drives, and once I have verified the duplicate storage on the 6 TB and smaller drives, I delete that year's folder on my computer's internal hard drive, getting back to having only current year files on my computer. I am not a fan of cloud storage - there are too many possibilities for losing the files or losing access to the files that I cannot control. Hackers are getting into what I expect should be among the most secure systems in the world, some stealing data, others installing ransomware, some just destroying data just for fun (this last phenomenon doesn't get much press coverage). Using a cloud service would entail some risk of these problems, but it still could be useful. A system like mine, using duplicate storage in separate locations, makes maintaining separate storage for real-time new work a combination of very difficult and very inconvenient. But using cloud storage for current year, new work. However, at year's end, copying that year's data to your own duplicate storage and then deleting that same data from the cloud would provide duplicate storage for all of your data while minimizing the hassle factor for you and minimizing the risks associated with cloud storage. The idea here is that I see a greater comfort level in controlling and possessing my duplicate storage, but also making limited use of cloud storage for productivity reasons while limiting any cloud-related risk. Choosing to make use of cloud storage doesn't automatically mean using nothing but cloud storage.

ALSO: Unless the building really was listing to starboard, the image isn't level. :)

I've answered quite a few requests for Alaska info over the years, and I started keeping a copy of the text of my responses. This is a pasted-together compilation of many of those responses. June into July is prime time for mosquitoes in Alaska - take a good repellent with you, but avoid DEET - it harms plastic, and camera gear has lots of plastic these days. The Alaska mosquitoes can bite through the hide of a caribou - they hurt! Get the latest copy of Milepost - a large book with astonishing detail about every inch of the state roads. It will be a huge help traveling by car or RV. On some of those roads, how far it is to the next gas station can have life-changing implications! Search online for it. Bears: photographing bears is a cottage industry in Alaska. There are places where you can stay at significant expense like the Brooks River falls, and there are single day, out-and-back flights available to get you to Brooks or a similar location and back again in a single day. Search online for details like locations, schedules, and prices. If you choose to do the day-flight option, pat attention to the flights weight restrictions - it can/will affect what gear you can take. Kenai Peninusula: Check online for which rivers will have salmon running at the time of your visit. Expect the Kenai River to be elbow-to-elbow with salmon fishing during that salmon run. Kachemak Bay at Homer is good for photos, and crossing the bay by boat (or plane) leads to more remote scenery. At Seward you can get a day-long cruise to the Kenai Fjords National Park - glaciers, eagles, probably a whale or 2, otters, puffins - very worthwhile. Make sure you book a day long trip and not the short 3 hour version that never leaves the bay at Seward. Book on a catamaran if motion sickness might be a problem - a cat is better than a single hull boat for this. Denali: there's Denali State Park on the south side of the mountain. It offers a view of more of the mountain (from 400 ft to 20,000 ft) than the national park on the north side (3,000 ft to 20,000 ft). In the national park, they have tour buses and shuttle uses. Tour buses each have a theme to the tour and are generally shorter than the shuttle routes and cost more. A ride on the Kantishna Shuttle will take you all the way (~90 miles) from the visitor center to the other end of the road at Kantishna and back, all in one long day. You'll see the park end to end and the driver will stop pretty much whenever someone wants. Check the park's website for details, schedules, and prices. You need to take a lunch with you - ask at the visitor center for places near the park that will make you lunches to take (if you don't make your own). The shuttle bus drivers know the park, explain things as they drive, and stop any time a rider sees an animal. You shoot from the bus through the open school-bus style windows. You can drive a private vehicle on the first 15 miles of road (all paved) in the national park. You have to turn around at the Savage River. The road is gravel from there on and only traveled by park vehicles and campers with reservations farther in. Watch for animals along the paved part. The animals there are built to survive -50 degree winters, so they won't be out frolicking on a warm, sunny day - they'll be hiding in the deepest shade they can find. But when it's overcast and raining or drizzling, they'll be out feeding. On the road north of Palmer toward Denali, watch for moose grazing in any of the many glacial ponds. They love the grass that grows on the bottom. About a mile north of the entrance to Denali National Park is a collection of hotels and other businesses that the locals call the Gulch. Hotels are on the west side of the road (belong to the cruise lines), and everything else is on the east side. This includes a restaurant/bar with entertainment that was pretty good a few years ago, a general store that caters to RV/campers, and the best fish and chips I've ever had (better than in Waterford, Ireland). The sign on the place just said Fish and Chips - they use fresh halibut, and it's sensational. Be prepared for rain. Rain covers for camera gear will be needed - either the expensive, custom fit types or the Optec disposable clear plastic ones (I use these). Ketchikan - we did a flightseeing tour into the Misty Fjords - expensive but worth every penny. Great views from the air, landed on a mountain lake and stood out on one of the plane's pontoons, took off over the waterfall that drains the lake. Ketchikan is an entertaining walk-around town, too - some good shooting there. Juneau - Mt Roberts was socked on the day we were there, so we didn't bother with the tram. We took a whale watching cruise that included lunch, reasonably priced, and we had good luck finding whales. Also saw eagles, seals. Skagway - we took a boat to Haines for a tour of the Eagle Preserve - waste of time because we were there in May, the wrong time of year. If you are going late in the year (September or later), it should be dramatically better. My wife and I took a cruise Anchorage to Vancouver, and enjoyed every bit of it. Of course, I had to go back, so we did a 2-week inland trip a couple of years later. My employer at the time had a contract with a car rental company that got them reduced rates, and it was open to employees to use for personal travel. It saved us quite a bit of money as standard rental car prices in Alaska were quite high at the time. Depending on your situation, it may be worth checking out. Our lodging on the inland trip was cheap - I did a lot online research and made reservations at places I guessed would be adequate without being too shabby. It worked out pretty good. The one compromise was to stay at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage for the night before we flew home (a concession to my wife's idea of "comfortable"). Do your homework, and have a great time. I envy you.

bgelfand said: “A disadvantage to high capacity cards is that if a card fails, there is the potential of losing a very large number of images. It is safer to you several smaller cards.” Very true. I shoot my 16 mp D7000 with a 32 gb card in slot 1 for raw files and a 16 gb card in slot 2 for basic jpgs. The jpgs are for convenience, mainly when I’m traveling. In that setup, I’ve never needed to put a second card in the camera in a single day’s shooting, even in Yellowstone shooting animals in spring! In my 24 mp D610, those same cards sometimes leads to needing a second card in slot 1 for a full day’s shooting, but quite infrequently (in fact, just once). mike_halliwell said: “There's no good reason to take a JPEG (compressed) image ONLY. If you need a JPEG for quick sharing, use RAW + JPEG. When you do take an image someone wants to buy or make a big poster from, a small JPEG is not your friend....” Also very true. You can set up your D7500 to save both raw and basic jpg to the card slot, and always have the jpgs available for routine and convenient use, plus the raw file for any image to you want to sell, donate, or print large, including when you want to crop the image and print it. To accomplish that, I suggest a couple of 64 gb cards (each should be large enough to hold a full day of raw+basic jpg), and keep your 256 gb card for when you want to shoot video. My routine for quite a few years now is to end each day by copying all of the day’s shooting, both raw and jpg, to the hard drive on my laptop, and then copy the same data from my laptop on to a portable USB drive. I’ve been a bit paranoid about duplicate storage for a long time. Paranoia is a good thing – it has been keeping our species alive for 200,000 years. On one trip (50th anniversary cruise Copenhagen to NY) I didn’t take the laptop, so I took enough cards for the entire trip. I stored the cards with raw files in one card case, and cards with the jpg files in a different card case – duplicate storage. Harder to achieve with only one card slot.

There has been a discussion in the Travel forum about the kinds of hazards that airport x-rays pose to film these days. I have some in-depth experience with this subject and posted several times on this thread: Airport X-Rays

From my perspective, I don't see any reason to think that you need to make a decision urgently - you have time on your side. I suggest using the Sig 17-50 and carrying the 18-200 for its longer focal length when you need it. After some time, you will accumulate personal experience about how often 50 mm isn't enough, and about how often, if at all, you find yourself wanting something longer than 200. THEN you can make an informed judgement about what lens you would like to buy. Just be sure to check the compatibility of any lens you consider for your D7000.

The most valuable characteristic the gate security scanners have for film users is the short duration of the x-ray exposure. The x-ray tube charges up, the operator moves an assortment of items on the conveyor belt into the machine, and then takes a snapshot of all that stuff using x-rays. The image is captured digitally and displayed on a screen for the operator to examine. The tube flashes the x-rays literally like an electronic flash on a camera - a burst lasting around 1/1,000 second. The energy of the x-rays used for the scans has to be high enough to penetrate the kinds of items the security system wants to detect, even if the items are hidden inside some sort of container. Any container too dense for the x-rays to get an interior image will be hand-inspected - opened by or in front of security personnel. The bottom line is that the dose RATE - the intensity of the x-ray field - is fairly strong. I estimated a dozen or so rad/hr (not a terribly precise estimate) - a dose rate no one would want to spend any time in. The key is that the dose rate exists for only a 1/1,000 second or so, meaning the total dose the scanned items receive is a fraction of a millirad, i.e., less than 1/1,000 of a rad. The digital image capture is what makes this all possible. As I said some time ago, these machines are the solution to a problem created when airports were required to increase security for passenger aircraft. Bringing a collection of the older types of x-ray machines to a central security checkpoint created a weight loading problem for air terminal floors that were never designed to carry that much weight. The weight came from all the lead and steel shielding necessary to reduce the dose rates around the machines for the people who worked at them all day. Going to the pulsed (flash-type) x-ray systems allows them to dramatically reduce the amount of shielding and still get the images they need without causing high doses among the gate security workers. Unfortunately, some of the old style x-ray machines are still in use. When the western world ramped up airport security, they wanted the rest of the world to do the same, since the security system is only as strong as its weakest entry point. Smaller, poorer countries were agreeable to joining the process, but didn't have the x-ray hardware or the budget to acquire some. The solution was to give the old machines being replaced across the US and Europe to the countries that had none at all. So taking film into and out of some countries includes the risk of it going through one of those old machines, and they are distinctly unkind to film.