thanks all. For the montage, I didn't spend a lot of time in fine tuning the selections from the 4 source images since each of them had the entire subject and shadow with the same sandy background. I was able to just do rough selection that included the shadows and copied to the blank sand background. I then blended the sand from each image with the sand in the background.

did some experimenting with auto-ISO in manual mode. Had a scene with a dark object beside window. Without changing the scene at all, I simply changed focus point. When focused at a brighter point over the window, the ISO was set a lot lower than when focused on the dark object beside the window. I also found that it is possible to use exposure lock with the focus point set to one point and then change focus to a different point. In this case, the auto-ISO function set the ISO corresponding to the original focus point before exposure lock. This, however, doesn't seem to be very useful since, if you go to the trouble of locking in exposure for the scene before final focus, you might as well manually set the ISO associated with the locked exposure.

Best I can tell is that the metering system didn't get the exposure right in the second shot. From EXIF data, the camera was set to auto-area AF mode. In this mode, the camera selects the location of the subject within the frame. The scenes' selected subject (e.g., its color) is part of the matrix metering algorithm. For the first shot, the camera selected a point directly on the large tree to the left of the person. The camera's primary focus point was on this tree and at about the person's knee level. For the second shot, the camera selected a point between the person and the same tree at a point just beside her feet as the primary focus point. That point was quite a bit lighter than the tree and, perhaps, contributed to the underexposure of the second image. Also, another change between the scenes is that, the person (or camera perspective) moved to the right leaving a larger area between the tree and the person in the second shot as compared to the first. With the second shot using this brighter area between that person and the tree as the subject, this likely also contributed to a difference in metering. In fact, while most of the second shot is dark, the subject area between the person and the tree is not terribly underexposed. I believe that you would have had more consistent exposure results if you had not let the camera select the subject focus point. Instead, a single point AF mode (manually set over the person's face) is probably a better approach.

...late summer drawings at Hampton Beach

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dropped in on the Manchester store last week to check out some lens options for my D810 that I had with me. Very accommodating. I've also seen some of their lenses for sale via Amazon and noted one example - the older Tamron 70-200 F/2.8 (model A009) - with direct buy from Hunt's Photo advertised @ $50 below the Hunt's price via Amazon. They also had a D850 in the store that they were showing off and let me try it out.

with a *.csv file opened in Excel, you should be able to select "Save As" and utilize the expansion menu under "Save As" to choose the specific format that you want to use. The one to choose is "Excel Workbook." The proper extension is automatically appended to the file name that you choose. So, if you started with "myfile.csv" and then did a "Save As" using the "Excel Workbook" option in the expansion menu and named the file "newfile," (don't name it "newfile.xlsx"), you should see "newfile.xlsx" in the directory where you saved it.

thanks to everyone for looking/commenting

thanks to everyone for looking/commenting.

thanks for commenting. I see your point on the green - particularly with the 4th image.

I've never seen that. Maybe there's something incompatible between the worksheet that you are getting the format from and the second worksheet that you are trying to save. Could the source worksheet have been created in a different version of Excel? Are you painting font formats for fonts that are not installed on your system? You might also check to make sure that the file being saved after formatting is the same one being opened after saving. Use "save as" with revised file name and revised directory location to confirm.

a few shots today at a local pond

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Comments on motion blur?...is it overdone?

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I own a Tokina AT-X-11-20 F2.8 DX and would echo other recommendations for that choice. It has a better dxomark score than various other options and has fast F2.8 aperture. Also, you may look at this site for lenses to consider:

http://www.dslrbodies.com/lenses/lens-databases-for-nikon/thoms-recommended-lenses.html

thanks for looking and comments. I agree with comments on need to adjust the subject size/position within the composite. I did a quick update reflecting that as shown below. My source image for the bike didn't include a complete front tire (nothing below the rim at bottom of frame) - I tried cloning it in. Also did some fine tuning of the selection. Source layers for subject (masked and original) and background are also shown below.

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Photoshopped composite - scene from Mount Washington Auto Road

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