I use either 4 or 8GB cards in all of my cameras, including my D800.
I have had card failures in the past, and don't want to risk losing any more than 8GB at a time. 64GB represents a whole lotta lost images if a card crashes. If I was forced to use large capacity cards, I would be backing up the cards to a laptop and/or USB drive at regular intervals. Using smaller capacity cards sorta forces the regular backup regime, which I think is a good thing. I use high end Sandisk cards exclusively - it is the only brand that has never given me a problem.

That $100 gets you a nice EVF, which is a bargain, IMHO, and turns it into a camera that I would actually buy.

[quote=Tom Daniels]This is a no brainer. The Sony RX100 III. I saw this RX100 in time as one of the best inventions of the year 2 years ago.
I have the RX100 and the RX100 II. The are without a doubt
great cameras. The photo's video and low light are great.
And the 1.8 zoom terrific. This is a revue a couple of years ago.
Now the third model has a viewfinder.

The viewfinder finally elevated the RX100 to one that I can get excited about. Before the addition of the viewfinder, I viewed the RX100 as just an overpriced Point and Shoot, regardless of how great the images were. What good is great IQ when you can't frame a shot in bright light because of the lack of an Eye Level Finder??

I am afraid that the RX100 lacks an essential feature - an eye-level viewfinder. I can't take any camera seriously that doesn't have one.
Even a crappy optical finder like the one in the Canon G series is way better than nothing when you are trying to compose an important shot in bright sunlight.

I have tried just about every every pocketable camera that there is over the last 15 years, and have found all of them lacking, mainly because everything that is truly pocketable (see note below)has a couple of major weaknesses: Tiny imaging sensors (unacceptable noise above ISO 400 (or less) - made even worse by the makers squeezing way too many pixels into the sensors), lack of eye-level viewfinders, no RAW capture mode, and very little in the way of manual control.

Having said that, I do have a pocket camera that I take along anytime one of my "real" cameras would be inappropriate, too inconvenient or not allowed - it is about 5 or 6 years old, but surprisingly, still available new: It is a Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS (Digital Elph). It has an optical viewfinder, a very good 35-105 equivalent zoom lens, is "only" 10 Mpxls (I wish it were about 5-6 Mpxls with better high ISO performance).

Note: Pocketable to me means shirt or jeans pocket, not safari jacket, cargo pants pockets.

igital elph

The OP has a D600 - the 10-24 would still be a 10-24 on his/her camera, but would only be usable from about 19mm up without severe vignetting. Of course, it could be shot in DX mode with a field of view of 15-36 equivalent. However, I would not use anything wider than 35mm for people pictures - the pano suggestion is the best option for the OP's application.

I have a Nikkor 12-24 f4 lens that I use for building interiors at FF focal lengths from 18-24 wide open on my FF Nikons. It is a very good lens and a bargain ultra-wide on FF, but it ain't no portrait lens.

Technically, that is true, but in about a gazillion lens shift "panos" of interiors, along with a lot of landscapes, I have yet to see one where parallax was an issue. And, when you rotate the camera/lens around its entrance pupil (AKA 'nodal point') you get the curvature above and below and all kinds of other distortion when you make panos of subjects that have straight lines in them. Straight lines stay straight when you do the shifty thing. Reading technical articles is one thing, actually using equipment in the real world is another thing entirely.

Since you have a 1.5 crop sensor, I would highly recommend the Nikkor 12-24 f4 lens - that has been my workhorse lens for architecture through my last 3 cameras - I still use it a lot with my D800. My other favorite lens is a 24/f3.5 PC lens that tilts and shifts. I don't think that will work on your D5100 though, because of interference with the viewfinder overhang.

I don't have one yet (they are backordered everywhere), but Kirk Tuck has one and he is so impressed he has posted a review at Amazon and has several articles at his blogsite explaining why he has now basically committed to doing pretty much all of his professional work with Lumix GH3 and GH4 cameras. To see the Amazon reviews, just google Lumix GH4 Amazon. The reviews link will be to the right of the camera listing.

Kirk has been going full steam ahead introducing video into his professional work for some time now (hybrid photography), so his interest in video is responsible for a lot of his enthusiasm for the Lumix cameras, since they are the class leader in hybrid technology.

However, the core of his work is still "still" photography, and he points out that the GH4 is at the bleeding edge of fast, accurate autoexposure and excellent image quality under a broad range of lighting, and gives up very little in comparison with the big high-end DSLRs.

According to him and others (including me) the top of the line MFT cameras have superior autofocus (especially in terms of accuracy) than DSLRs with their focus sensor arrays that are not on the imaging chip. I am primarily an existing light/natural light photographer, and have been frustrated by focus accuracy issues with 4 generations of expensive DSLRs. As a result, I have used manual focus for 99% of my work for the last 10 years - the best thing that has happened in the DSLR world (for me) is the development of "Live view" with screen magnification for checking focus. That is about the only aspect of built-in video I have used and is the main reason I bought my D700. At that time, my main camera was the 10Mpxl Sony R1, which had superior (Contrast Detect) auto focus and superior IQ in good light, but was limited by its fixed (although superb) 24-120 zoom lens.

FWIW, Mr. Tuck is a very talented very successful professional photographer who hosts a popular blog site and has 5 books in print about different aspects of photography - you can check him out at http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/

There are several other extensive Amazon reviews by serious photographers who also actually have the GH4 - the review currently following Kirk Tuck's goes deeply into the interesting subject of using the 4k video system's capabilites to shoot 24 or 30 frames per second 8+ Mpxl stills! How's that for birds in flight or sports of all kinds?

I have to add that I won't be getting a GH4 myself because I am not a big video fan, so I have the Lumix GX7 which has most of the technical goodness of the "Pro" GH4 for stills (the latest gen sensor, fast/extremely accurate autofocus, the terrific viewfinder, dual control wheels, lots of customizeability, etc.) but is comparitively lacking in the video department, which is fine with me, especially since the GX7 can now be had for roughly 1/2 the price of the GH4. I like it so much, I have mostly ignored my D800 and 2 Fuji X cameras for the last 4 months.

Yes, and he worked with really big negatives and some very fine lenses both in and outside the darkroom.

Prior to the D800 (D700, D200), I always shot RAW+JPG, and had to apply sharpening to every single image in Post. With the D800, I have only added sharpening to a few images out of many thousands taken. Those few images were mostly not quite in focus or a little camera shake creeped in at time of capture. Normally, the D800 images are so sharp straight out of the camera that sharpening only degrades the image. I still shoot RAW + JPG, but don't use the RAW images nearly as often as I used to with the earlier cameras.

I don't shoot my D800 any differently than I did the D700, or the D200 before it. I use(d) the same film era lenses on all 3 cameras. Each time I upgraded my camera, the lenses got better. That stuff you hear over and over about the D800 and lenses, and having to use a tripod, ......blah blah blah.... is a lot of horsepuckey. I shoot my D800 hand-held all the time, only pulling out the tripod for really critical stuff - no different than with the preceding cameras. And another thing, you DO NOT have to print huge to see the difference between the D800 and a lower resolution camera, such as my 16Mpx MFT and Fuji cameras. BTW - There is a major difference between comparing PRINTs from a decent printer and pixel-peeping on a low resolution monitor. That is largely a waste of time when evaluating IQ of lenses and sensors.

DP ratings were done at different times by different people and are very subjective to boot. I don't usually bother with their camera reviews - I believe that reviews done by real photographers doing real work with the cameras are much more valuable.

My Nikons create downsampled jpgs - the small ones are 1/4 the Mpxls of the large ones - for my D800, that means the Small is 9 Mpxls instead of 36. The linear dimensions (print size)are halved, so instead of getting a 16 x 24" print at full size, the small size results in a 8 x 12" print at 300 dpi. The accompanying RAW files are full size in both cases. The medium setting gives 20 Mpxl jpgs, which would print at 12 x 18 (300dpi). These are all jpg Fine, so all would result in equally high quality prints at their 300dpi print sizes.

The beauty of the D800 is that you have those 36 Mp when you want them, and you aren't forced to use all of them when you don't. The D800 offers a whole bunch of format and image size settings, so you don't have to shoot at 36 Mp if for some reason you don't want to. It also gives you black framing lines in the viewfinder when you are shooting in the cropped modes, which gives you the same advantage that rangefinder cameras offer - that is, you can see outside the shooting frame and watch for stuff coming in from the sides when you are waiting for something to happen, letting you get a head start on tripping the shutter at the precise moment. I used this capability extensively in Florida shooting birds handheld in a swamp from a moving boat with the 24-120.

You can also shoot with your APS-C size lenses at 15+ Mpxls if you want the extra reach for bird photography, etc. And don't believe the BS about the D800 being unusable unless you have high-dollar pro lenses, shoot on a tripod all the time, etc. etc. I use all of my old film lenses, mostly zooms, and what I have found is that the D800 just makes the old lenses look better than they ever have with any other camera, including the D700 I shot with professionally for years.

I often shoot hand-held with no issues - if you obey the old rules about focal length and shutter speed, it is no different than any other camera. If I am shooting above 200mm, I nearly always use a very sturdy tripod - as I have always done. That was true for the D700 as well.

I only have 2 modern lenses - a 24-120 f4 FF, and a 12-24 f4, which is a high-quality lens for 1.5x "cropped" cameras. The 12-24 is one of my favorite lenses. I use it at focal lengths from 18-24mm full-frame at any aperture on my D800 and it works great without significant vignetting. Stopped down, I can easily go to 15-16 mm. You can get this very good lens for around $500 used, and it gives you extreme wide angle for a bargain price.

Of course, due to the extreme resolution, the D800 is less forgiving of slopply technique than a lower res camera if you are pixel peeping at 100%. The beauty of it is that you can down-res the images while you are perfecting your technique and they will look just like other high quality DSLR images with lower resolution. The downside is cost, but considering what it offers, I consider it well worth every penney. Plus, it is cheap compared to the top of the line "Pro" Nikons, which to me are mostly oriented toward "machine gun" sports photography, and none of them approach 36Mpx..

In my opinion, the D800 is superb in every way (for my type of shooting), and it is (finally) the last DSLR I will ever buy. I am going to get a second body, and I fully expect the D800 to outlive me.

Here is a great early review by Mark Dubovoy, a master large format landscape photographer who, until the D800, never found a 35mm that would give him the image quality he demanded for his landscapes -

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/an_embarrassment_of_riches.shtml

There are a few paragraphs at the beginning devoted to the Sony NX7 - just scroll down aways to get to the D800 review. It is interesting that at the beginning, he didn't like the D800 at all (he is used to large body medium and large format cameras). However, once he actually started shooting with it, he completely reversed his opinion, outside of a few niggles here and there.

If Nightski crops her 6D's image down to the field of view of her Rebel, the resulting image will be roughly 7.8 Mpx, which is roughly 20+% less than the resolution of the Rebel. So unless she is shooting in poor light where the newer sensor might make up for the lower resolution, I think she is better off shooting the birds with the Rebel until she can get a longer lens for her 6D.