Nokia pureview 808 smartphone has the best phone camera ever made, with good zoom also and wifi and much more. I would buy this rather than a cheap camera.

HDR is not so complicated, but getting from the target you point your camera at to the final HDR can be done in many different ways. It is just like when you travel, you can choose from using your, car, an airplane, a train, a boat or a taxi to name a few. All can get you to the destination, but the experiance and the quality of trip varies. It is the same with HDR, there are many different methods that give you different quality and speed but all will deliver HDR pic in the end of the process.

You just need to choose the method you think fits your needs best and experiment.

No I have not compared to anything else, have not done much stitching. But I can say it does handle colours and exposure well but can fail in stitching straight lines properly.

You could try microsoft Ice, it is free and pretty good.

part of what happened is spot metering, not matrix metering in your camera. If you change your metering to matrix you will get different results.

Or like big-guy said, underexposure, but then probably with camera set to matrix metering.

Then the camera will use the full ISO scale. It means that when you shoot RAW or Jpeg in very low light you will get very noisy pics. I recommend you set a upper limit for the ISO or set ISO manually. I think you should not use ISO above 2000 on this camera.

18-200 Nikon or 18-300 nikon if you are comfortable with the price. (Then you can let go the 70-300 also) Many say the 18-300 is the only zoom needed for a nikon dx camera.

Depends on other settings, are you shooting with auto ISO, do you set ISO manually, do you have set limits for variation in ISO in auto mode?

Don't know. I bought mine D600 in Dec. It has the spots. But it is no big deal, I also have a D200 with dirty sensor and a D80 which I noticed had some new dirt spots 2 weeks ago. My first Dslr D100 also had spots. The only difference with the D600 is that first cleaning is earlier than usual. Everything else about this camera is perfect, people should not avoid this great camera because of this irrelevant extra small problem.

I lived there for 48 years. The roads vary a lot, gravel roads in the highlands (where you find lot of beautiful places to photograph). But most of the roads or ok, just be careful as always. Helicopter tours are possible but I think a better choice is to stay on the ground. Check VIP Iceland www.vipiceland.is. They have guided lot of photographers. A 4x4 glacier trip is something you should try.. Best time to visit is mid june to end of sept.

Stitch first, then check carefully for misalignment in stitching, then everything else.

HDR is a very simple thing that seems to be complicated. So I try to explain it here in few words.

1. HDR is all about getting Higher Dynamic Range than you get from one shot.

2. There are many ways to make HDR pics.
a). In camera HDR.
b). Bracketing, 3 to 9 shots. The Bracketing has the advantage that it is fast when done right. You set your camera up for bracketing and set the shutter to continuous and get all the shots in about 1 sec. That eliminates ghosts from moving things as much as possible.
c) You can take one pic and adjust in Lightroom, mostly by controlling shadows and highlights to get more Dynamic Range in the pic.
d). You can make copies of your pic in Lightroom with exposure +2 and -2 and then let photomatix make HDR from your copies and original.
e). You can take multiple shots manually ( which is exactly the same as bracketing, but without continuous shooting)

So this is actually simple and easy and just remember it is about combining more dynamic range, or I could say combining one normal pic with underexposured and overexposured pic in one final picture.

If you want full control and max quality you will prefer raw and bracketing, not in camera HDR.

Thanks Carl. This web seems to be a good mix of fun and wisdom. I look forward to find new friends here.

When you use the DX lens on D600 or D800 you will be using only part of the sensor to take photographs, a part in the middle of the sensor that is the same size as a DX sensor. Therefore your lens will not effect the ISO of your D800, meaning you have better low light performance than if you use a D7100. Yes, you understand it right.

Maybe I should learn to use the auto settings on my cameras. I have been taking photographs for 36 years. Today I am mostly using Nikon D600 and D200 and I almost never am happy with my photos until I have processed them in at least LR4. There is some lens vignetting, highlights or shadows or the horizon or something else I have to adjust in the afterprocess to be happy with my pics. And I switched to Dslr from rather good point and shoot because I very seldom managed to get fairly good pics with my point and shoot. I really envy people who have the skills to get perfect pics from auto mode point and shoot cameras.