Carbonite online will save your deleted files for 30 days. The Carbonite local mirror image (a bit cumbersome for recovery) will provide recovery points.

I do not actually use drag-and-drop. I've accidentally dropped things in the wrong place. If it is a whole batch of data, it creates quite a mess. I use the mouse to select > CTRL-C > CTRL-V (on a PC).

BTW, The Carbonite online is quite cumbersome with over 600 GB of photo data. However, it came in very handy when my Windows XP machine bit the dust last year, and I needed access to the files while I built a new Windows 7 machine.

The data drives from my old machine were somewhat functional, but interfacing them with my wife's laptop was quite a chore.

The common advice is three different backups to three different media.

I'm now using Carbonite online, Carbonite mirror image on an external 2TB drive, and copy-and-paste to an external 2TB drive. That makes four copies including my 2TB internal data drive.

I started this after paying big bucks for a recovery service several years ago.

This is the exact result I was going to suggest before I read CaptainC and others.

Absolutely gorgeous!

Rule of thirds
Get rid of extraneous empty space
Give the main subject somewhere to go other than off the frame
All kinds of drama
Slight vignette draws eye to main event

There are plenty of good ball heads out there, but none of them solves the problem of counterbalance.

If you are trying to follow anything in motion, you need a very uniform drag in all directions. Additionally you need to have the center of gravity zeroed out.

Fluid heads with counterbalance adjustments do this best. They are the head of choice in cinematography, which is essentially what you are trying to capture with wildlife in motion.

When I saw the title of this topic, I didn't expect much.

This one really jumped off the screen. Nice composition, lighting, subject ...

The only thing I would try is to remove some of the effect of the craquelure on the face and hair. Do this ever so slightly so the removal is not obvious. I assume you are working in Photoshop. If this effect is on a separate layer, you can play with a mask. There are other ways to accomplish this, but a layer mask is an easy, nondestructive method.

Post more pics!

I totally agree.

I did a shoot with a few kids bicycling at a picnic party. The ones shot with a slow shutter speed, blurred background, blurred spokes, and pretty sharp subjects got the most wows from the parents.

Of course, you will need the static shots of the kids as well. Stand back and use various focal lengths to try to get the flash illuminating things other than your main subject. Otherwise you will get a lot of the "marshmallow in the coal bin" effect.

This larger inter-pixel spacing allows the use of mirrors around the edges of each pixel sensor to direct more light into each one, thereby enhancing the sensitivity of the device, which in turn reduces noise artifacts as well as provides other benefits listed above.

Usually pretty close within the manufacturers' specs (generally around 1%)

After having loaded myself down with a D3 and three lenses, I "lent" my D70, with an 18-200 lens, to my daughter. I almost cried when I took it to the UPS store.

I had put up with a fair amount of noise and other shortcomings with that rig, but that combination of zoom range and VR on a lens just wonderful. If you can put up with a little softness from the lens, the 16MP on the D7000 will give you a lot of wiggle room to crop.

I use a 70-200 with a 1.4X on a D3 with its FX sensor. I am very happy with the quality although the earlier versions had a few issues around the edges (easily corrected in Photoshop and probably cropped off with a DX sensor). I very often am wishing for a lot more lens, especially with wildlife.

Although I haven't had the experience with bigger glass on my camera, my inclination would be to go as big as you can handle and afford. Use the other reviews to determine the actual lens.

Sharp closeups are dramatic.

The lag you experience could be from a cheaper (slower) mem card. You have a lot of info in a RAW file, and if your card can't keep up with the transfer of data it will seem to lag. Try a UDMA card or a 60MB or 90MB transfer rate.[/quote]

The other advantage with RAW, besides white balance, is the wider dynamic range. Try shooting a dusk shot with RAW and JPG. There is generally a marked difference of detail in the lighter sky near the horizon.

It's actually High DYNAMIC Range 8-)

Here's another link:

Aurora in Finnish Lapland, 2011

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=29568236&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=a3a3a3&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Yes, here's the reply to a previous post:

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"Nikon D3 which has a timer feature to take a sequence of up to 999 frames automatically

Download into Lightroom and do global color corrections and cropping ... export to a folder.

Import into Photodex's Pro Show Gold and play it back at a higher frame rate.

Obviously there's a lot more to it which I don't mind sharing, but those are the basic steps"

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I'm having fun with this, but it took a big chunk out of my life for a couple weeks. I'd like to be able to do the kind of work in the original post on this topic. There is a lot of know-how, time and equipment tied up in those sequences.

I told a non-photographer aquaintance what I was doing, and she asked what I did with the time lapse videos, "Just look at them?" I answered, "Well, yeah."