I always travel with a laptop. At the end of each day, I transfer the pictures of the day to the hard drive of the laptop. At the end of the vacation, I transfer all of the pictures to TWO external hard drives in case one of them fails in the future. I also take the SD card out of the camera and put it away in storage. I have three copies of every picture I take. I think that's insurance enough. I've also considered copying my pictures to cloud storage, but so far it seems like extra bother to me.

I mentioned my Nikon FA previously. I actually got my start in photography with a Nikon FTn and a 55mm f1.2 lens in 1969. Now that was a brick. It was a bit quirky. You had to take the back off to change rolls of film. You had to waste a shot to lock up the mirror. It went up but didn't come down after pressing the shutter release. To make a double exposure, you had to turn a knob and rewind the film one frame to repeat the shot. The shutter release had a dot on it and rotated when you rewound the film. You would rewind it until the dot was in the same position as before you rewound it, and that was one frame. That lens is considered soft by today's standards, but at the wider apertures, it had better sharpness and contrast than the 50mm f1.4 that I replaced it. I still have the camera and original lens. I haven't done any film since 2007, but it's there if I change my mind about it.

Don't use anything abrasive on plated contacts. If you wear through the plating, you'll typically have bare copper underneath which will oxidize and likely cause an unreliable contact with the battery in the future. I learned this the hard way cleaning the contacts in the battery compartment of a camera, which then required frequent cleaning afterward or the meter became unreliable.

C.R.I.S Camera sells adapters that let you use readily available silver oxide and alkaline batteries in cameras that were designed for mercury batteries. Mercury batteries were 1.35 volts. These adapters drop the voltage of silver oxide or alkaline batteries to something close to this so that your meter is still accurate. Silver oxide batteries are more expensive than alkaline batteries, but they have a very flat discharge curve. Basically they work at the right voltage until they don't, whereas the voltage drop of alkaline batteries is continuous over time. This is no problem with cameras with voltage regulation, but cameras that relied on mercury batteries didn't have this. They relied on the flat discharge curve of the mercury batteries to maintain a constant voltage over time. If you use one of these adapters, then I would suggest investing in silver oxide batteries. They cost a bit more.

http://shop.criscam.com/collections/mercury-battery-adapters

The last film camera I used was a Nikon FA. My son in law still uses it frequently and does quite a bit of black and white darkroom work. The camera was a dream to use and far ahead of its time (Introduced in 1983), 4 exposure modes, matrix metering, 1/4000 shutter and 1/250 flash synch, and the option to put a motor drive on it. The one feature that hadn't been worked out at the time was balanced fill flash. You have to do the calculations yourself. I've read that there were some quality control issues with the camera, and if one breaks, it's unlikely that it can be fixed (though that is true of many older cameras). Mine worked and still works perfectly.

Back in the days of all mechanical cameras, the conventional wisdom was that they should be cleaned, lubricated and adjusted from time to time. Essex Camera in New Jersey was favored by pros for this and also general camera repair, but their business was wiped out by Hurricane Sandy, and they never reopened. Can anyone think of a reputable camera service and repair business for these older cameras. I can imagine turning a camera over to a hack and having them spray WD 40 inside to lubricate it. I'm wondering who really has the equipment to work on these older cameras, including the equipment to calibrate focus and shutter timing.

Nikon's AF-D lenses, some of which are still made, are not much more bulky than their older manual lenses. Their focusing in the manual mode is not as smooth as a good manual lens, but it's adequate. I think that what makes newer autofocus lenses so bulky is incorporating motors and electronics inside. It's really the glass inside that makes the lens, but I have to agree that some of the newer autofocus lenses are real monsters compared with the older lenses in terms of size and weight.

I sometimes just put a 12 megapixel Canon Powershot in my pocket when I'm out and about, and I've taken some great pictures with it. But what you see is what you get. The Nikon D800e and then the D810 took things to a different level. With good lenses, you get medium format quality and the ability to crop heavily without noticeable loss of quality. You can't do that to the same extent with lesser cameras. Just the appearance of the pictures in general is eye popping compared with anything else I've ever used. Now that they're apparently "dumping" this camera with heavy discounts, including bundles with the 24-120 lens, I wonder if a replacement is on the near horizon. I can think of ways they could make the camera better, but I think 36 megapixels already challenges most lenses and exceeds their ability to resolve detail.

All three of your micro lenses are legendary. Your 80-200 f4.5 is as sharp as anything new. (I bought the f4 that replaced it, and it's tack sharp too.) I still have and use a 55mm f3.5 micro that predates your f2.8. I don't own a sharper lens, though it lacks a floating element for distance correction and is optimized for working close. I have a 50mm f1.4 that was my go to lens in the 70s. I put the AI aperture ring on it myself. Nikon has never made a 50mm lens, expensive or cheap, that isn't very sharp. The one "lemon" I see in all of your lenses is the 43-86 zoom. Not one of their best.

I have all of the equipment to be "back in the saddle again" sitting in my garage, Omega D2 enlarger with condensers/lenses for 35mm and 4 x5, the two formats I used back in the day. I have the tanks, trays and other equipment to make it work. I think my son in law will end up using it if he gets a larger place to live with room for a darkroom. I have nothing against darkroom work, but I've personally moved past black and white. Looking back on the many photos I took in college in black and white, they aren't so much an artistic expression as they are something that dates the photos and makes them look dated. (though I've very lucky to have them) This is just my personal feeling. I know that many still enjoy doing darkroom work. Besides, I'm so enthralled with the Nikon D810 that I bought that I feel like a kid at Christmas every day that I take the camera out. This is what keeps my interest going at a high level.

What do you do with all of this film that you shoot? Just curious. If you're just scanning it like many people these days, you're wasting time and money. A first generation image out of a camera sensor with the quality we now have will have more and better information than a second generation scan of film. These are reasons why I gave up film completely. I gave away my Nikkormat FT3. I gave away my Nikon FA. I kept my Nikon FTn for sentimental reasons (gift brand new from my father in 1969), but I'll never use it again.

I am stuck with perhaps thousands of rolls of film accumulated over decades of time. The idea of scanning it all is overwhelming, and I need to do it to be able to distribute the same pictures to all of my children. I bought a Canon flatbed, film capable scanner 3 years ago, and it is still in the box. I was born at the wrong time :-)

The business of taking and sharing pictures is best done digital for convenience, cost and speed. In fact, the market shows that phones have taken over much of this business. I used to think that 35mm film had the ability to outshine digital, and then I bought Nikon D810. It blows 35mm film away. I have nothing at all against people who still shoot on film. I gave my Nikon FA and a bunch of manual focus lenses to my son in law. He loves the camera. He loves darkroom work. It's a hobby, not a necessity. When I think of pulling out my Nikon Ftn, bought new by my father, I get sentimental and then say "Nah, forget it." Too much bother and money and time wasted. This is my opinion. My son in law doesn't share it. Obviously many people don't share it, and that's okay with me.

I bought my D810, 70-200 f4 VR and a 50mm f1.4 AF-D from a local camera store in the past couple of years. I bought two lenses from B&H in the same time period. I don't have a problem either way. I'd like to give the local guy the majority of my business so maybe he's going to be around in the future. Things are getting tough for smaller camera stores these days. I have to wonder if K.R. is somehow getting kickbacks. I wouldn't think that B&H or Adorama would work that way, but what do I know?

I've exchanged a half dozen e-mails with him. I've pointed out to him that he leaves obsolete information all over his web site from experience he had with equipment 10-15 years ago. He once compared digital and large format photography many years ago using a 6 megapixel Nikon as the digital example. That article is still on his site. He told me he doesn't have time to clean it up. It's almost comical they way almost everything he likes becomes the camera or lens that he always carries around with him. He would need a truck. I don't think he's always wrong. It's just hard to tell the difference. One thing I do like about his site is that it introduced me to the existence of equipment/cameras/lenses that I didn't know anything about. But I never trust everything he says.

You sometimes have to take Ken Rockwell with a grain of salt. Sometimes his reviews are right on. Sometimes the things he says border on psychotic, and I think he does that to get your attention. In any case, here is his review of your lens. http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/70210f4.htm

I don't have time for a complete internet search again on this lens, but I recall that others have had focusing issues. Perhaps there are too many variables including the camera to blame the lens for all of its perceived imperfections. One problem could be that people are buying this 30 year old lens second hand, and you never know how the lens was treated. Perhaps the lens you buy was found at the bottom of a ravine on Mt. Everest, and you can imagine how it got there. In any case, when you get a winner, you're happy, and that's all that counts.

I have found when buying used lenses like this on eBay, the lenses coming from Japan have been treated better than what you typically find in the used display of a local camera store.

If you want to know, I ended up buying the 70-200 f4 VR new, and it's a stellar performer. I can't deal with the weight of the f2.8 lenses attached to an already heavy camera. I did have to do a fine tune on the focus because of a front focus issue, so nothing is perfect.