XQD cards are the fastest available both to shoot with / write to and to download. They are not being phased out; Sony is now incorprating them in their high end video devices.

You speak of a personal situation where you are at risk at most of a small inconvenience . A professional always has a backup as you cannot take time out on a client shoot with a failure. If you go on an extended trip having a backup is essential as a failure can mean a wasted trip.

Every dslr will at some point fail; shutter wear, you drop it, it gets wet etc., if you only shoot round home. If you travel this is more serious.

Along with the confection of absurd certificates and paperwork the endless bureaucracy of the 'ealf n safety brigade, the tests and the rest of the BS that goes with proving that a pill used in Europe can serve the same purpose somewhere else in the world. Corporate greed has a lot to do with it but the administrative potpourri has an equal share in the responsibilty.

Do not drive in London, it is quicker to walk and parking is a nightmare thanks to our car friendly mayor. The underground offers a good transport system when the drivers are not on strike.

Hundreds of opportunities. Look for photo tours in London on line or hook up with someone who will help you with some local knowledge via a photoclub, again search on line.

The Thames is a good place to start, walk the embankment from Battersea to the barrier; you have the south bank, the Canary Wharf area (great at night), the Tower of London, lots of bridges, HMS Belfast and assorted other historical ships; you could spend a fortnight there alone. Paddington Station for the architecture but do that late when you are not being trampled by the wage slaves. The City for architecture, the Bank of England, the Lloyds building. Soho, Leicester Square, Chinatown, Oxford Street, Regent Street; the list is endless.

Around London - Richmond park for the red and fallow deer, Kew Gardens, the greatest botanical garden in the world.

Whatever produces the image that I want.

IBM sold their laptop division to Lenovo several years ago.

I use that laptop with an i5 processor for remote control of cameras in the field as it has good battery life, is small and light but fully functional. For that price the laptop would be about right. It is not a good laptop for editing images though as the screen resolution is limited; not the greatest video card. It is strong and resists hard use fairly well.

Making a judgement on the use of auto ISO based on that short experience is a mistake. As with anything new it will improve with experience. Work out what went wrong and try it again.

Auto ISO is invaluable when shooting fast with the other elements of the exposure fixed. You have to work out how to use it.

A basic thought bearing in mind the characteristics of the camera; limit the auto ISO range to say 6400 max as above that the D7200 gets very noisy. That is still 6 stops of range.

Nikon has a number of product groups other than photogrpahy; it appears to be write offs in these areas that are causing the problem.

Maybe at last this will lead a trend toward closing the product lines that are being swamped by smart phone cameras and concentrating on those areas where the market remains strong. I could never understand how any company can make money out of all these little point and shoot devices which take considerable development resources and return pennies.

Do you misunderstand the effect of this? You do not increase the magnification of the subject; you increase the proportion the subject takes up in the frame.

Which then leads to the question why don't you shoot in FX and crop.......

Yes. And I have a digital one on my smartphone as well.

When I use it the lighting conditions are inconsistent and the shoot requires me to react quickly so I don't have time to adjust exposure settings. Aircraft crossing a bright sky, panning across sunset, that sort of thing.

I think this is all getting more than a little confused. The reference quoted to me in the reply posted above refers to video systems not camera systems. I had the chance to talk to tech at Nikon this morning about another issue; asking them about this they are totally unaware of any native white balance. Unlike ISO which is set native by the design of the sensor (optimum performance of the photosite) the white balance is a software variable set by the firmware without a hardware control.

I have never heard of a native white balance - can you give some examples and further information please?

Why does it have a native white balance? It has a native ISO.

White balance is the result of a measurement; it is a value written into the file data that can be altered (in RAW). There is no fixed value that the camera will default to; out of the box is is usually set to Auto.

Anyone undertaking something like a wedding, especially a family event where failure can have long term personal consequences, had better have a backup camera and a good understanding of what a wedding photographer is supposed to do. It would take some forgiving if you screw up the key event shots....