njohnson

If you are shooting jpeg's thats probaby your problem. Saturation may be set very high or possibly WB issue. Setting it to cloudy or shade pushes warmer colors up. Shoot RAW and this will allow you to have better control of your color/temperature & exposure correction if you use auto exposure. If you dont have a RAW processing program use adobe DNG converter. Free from adobe. This will alow you to open and adjust your images with more basic programs after conversion. You may already know this but its my to cents.

A friend of mine just got the d40x and I was very impressed with the quality. Heck go with the D40x I cant say about the D40 though. No hand on experience there. Consittered the D300? Very happy with this camera.

Envy..

I want to be down there for the monsoons. I am a big fan of thunderstorms. I wouldnt suggest it as advise caust I am yet to try it but there is a nifty tool called "lightning trigger" that trips the shutter with every strike. faster than the lightning as I am told. Only available if you have a standard SLR or DSLR I do believe.. google it. It looks like a fun device. I am consitering one myself. Have fun out there and be safe!

GND filter can be used to hold back ambiant light to do star trails. Or to hold back moon light to expose a landscape. Standard ND filter can be used on bright moonlit nights to do longer exposures for trailing of what stars may be visible. I believe polarizer does still reduce reflections from moonlight. Other than this I see nothing more than use for special effects.

It does void warrenty using 3rd party batteries. I agree with charles. Surely not worth the risk. I have heard a lot of bad wrap with using discount batteries. Who knows there may be some out there that will work but I wont use them in my preciousness.