I had a P500 before I moved to a D5200. I got some great shots on numerous African safaris while others were switching out lenses. I do better with the D5200 with a 55-300 zoom in Sports mode and continuous shooting than I did with the P500, but that's the main thing. The macor flower shots, landscapes when not zoomed in and the zooming in on wildlife a couple of hundred yards away were great for a camera this light and compact. I'm sure the P520 is even better. I sold my P500 to a friend, wish I'd kept it as a second camera. Hope this helps. PM me if you want to see a gallery of shots from the P500.

Very nice shot, one to be proud of...

That's news to me, I'm a Nikon guy too and their terms of service say no RAW files. Maybe I could fool it into taking them, but in my case it's getting pretty massive and would actually be impractical. Outbound speeds are a fraction of inbound Internet, so it would take weeks to get my stuff out there. It was bad enough with what I was already backing up. It did save my bacon when I had a hard drive failure last year. I used an external drive to recover most of my stuff and Carbonite to fill in what I was missing. I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy after seeing what losing everything has done to some of my clients who did not believe us when we recommended backup solutions. They all have new found religion now. My important stuff is in at least three places and one of them MUST be off site.

Hi Jerry, computer guy Dave here. I use Carbonite personally, it's unlimited and you can get an account for about $100 a year that includes one computer and one external drive. The only problem is they won't backup RAW files. I use them for all but my RAW files. For those I use an external drive, the computer they're on and make Blu-ray disk backups at the end of each year (they hold about 25GB each). Amazon has a cheap backup solutions for files that don't need to be accessed very often and also different plans for ones that do. On my Carbonite, I can get to any of my backed up files from any computer or smartphone or tablet I have from anywhere in the world. I got a Word document once from Africa that I had forgotten. Hope this helps.

As a computer guy, I love Picasa as a poor man's Lightroom or Photoshop. I have Lightroom 5 and most of my post-process workflow is done now in LR5 or Photoshop Elements 12. But, since I have a Google account with lots of room, my edited photos from LR5 are usually imported into Picasa and then posted for family and friends at Google. The previous posts are right about 3.9 being the latest. My recommendation is to update from the Help menu, then you're sure you are getting the latest from the horse's mouth and not some sketchy 3rd party site.

Good job. I found a run down Texas ranch last Sunday and spent some time and posted here in the Gallery. These old buildings have character, even in their demise. Did you stumble on this one or go out intentionally trying to find a location for a shot like this? In my case, I got lucky in about 20 minutes of driving down rural roads near Austin. Again, great shot. Best of luck in the New Year!

Good eye. I try to make it to as many sunrises and sunsets as I can. Looks like crystal clear cold air. I really like the 2nd pic with the color coming into the clouds.

Very creative. Love the colors and the composition... Happy New Year!

Got to NC with the monopod and no trickery. I like the staff concept, you could turn it into a snake, ala Moses, and confuse everybody so you could make a hasty getaway...

You can shoot pictures that normally would be totally black at ISO 100 if you use a high ISO, say 1000 or above, but you get the side effect of noise, the graininess you talked about. I noticed on my D5200 the other day I was at ISO 1000 in Aperture Priority mode in the daytime, but it was because I had set it that way for a night shoot previously. Always look at the Info display to check your settings unless you're in fully auto mode, in which case you have an expensive point an shoot camera. Welcome to the Hog...

I'm a computer guy and I couldn't have put it any better...

Thanks, that's the look I usually go for. I was halfway done shooting when I realized even though I was in Aperture Priority mode, I had left ISO set at 1000 from a previous night time shoot. The pics got much better after I backed it down to ISO 100. I broke a cardinal rule, always check your settings!

We had a guy get by with this clever ruse with a Masai club that was about 40" long when we were coming back from Kenya one time. He limped better than Chester on Gunsmoke as we cleared security and kept it up all the way to his seat on the plane. He walked OK without it when nature called on the long plane ride to London, however.

I don't think I could ever get my ornery 12 year old Calico Fluffin to pose or look at me long enough to get the wonderful glint in the eyes that you've captured on each of your darlings. Great work. The term "herding cats" comes to mind! You must be a cat whisperer...

Don't just practice... Take a martial arts course, maybe a monopod can become the next weapon of choice, replacing the venerable nunchuck! I can see a whole series of movies in the making, and it might have all started right here at the Hog...