Also check out KEH.com for good deals on used and refurbished gear. Cameta has been a good source as well. I'm blessed to live here in Austin, when I want to buy from a brick and mortar store, the service and support at Precision Camera is hard to beat.

I have the D7200. Bigger buffer and builtin wifi are the main advantages, a little better low light performance, also. All are important to me as a wildlife photographer. I can't believe there are any refurbed D7200s yet. I have over 60,000 shots on mine and it's going strong. Id spend the little extra. I'm considering a refurbed D7100 as a backup body, you really can't go wrong either way. And yes, I've used Adorama before, they get high marks around here.

I have average, newer Sigma equipment and their USB dock. It can update firmware, they just improved the autofocus on the 150-600. You can also micro-adjust the lens. Both useful features.

Regardless of any arguments going on here, I am appreciative of the heads up and did the firmware update on my 150-600 C. I'm going out in the morning to see if it did indeed speed up the AF when zoomed in. I love this dock, I also have the 18-300 and did slightly tune it last year, rather than go through micro adjusting it with my camera body. The body only tunes one focal length, the dock can do four different focal lengths. I personally feel being able to do that, rather than jacking around with multiple bodies or sending BOTH the body and the lens into the manufacturer is a real plus. And yes, both lenses were just fine right out of the box, I just applied a very minor tweak with the dock on the 18-300. Cheers everybody.

I posted a similar question a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to download the last version of Picasa and keep the install program handy in case I ever need it on a standalone computer. I would still like to know if you will be able to email out of the program (very handy, it automatically downsizes images to web friendly resolution) and if it will still upload to Google Photos, two features I use a lot. I spend most of my time in Lightroom, but these two features have proven useful to me both as a photographer and as blogger. Does anybody know about these two features?

I put my D7200 on CH (continuous high speed) and hold the shutter until I hear 3 shots rattled off. I'll bet that will work on your camera also and lessens any movement from one shot to the next. And, has been suggested before, RTFM. Good luck!

I personally use the star ratings, 5 is a Wow shot, 4 is worth working on, 3 is a picture that may contain a friend or relative that I want to keep and 2 and below usually get deleted. I've found that the new free Adobe Bridge makes quicker work out of applying the star ratings so I do that there, then import into Lightroom for keywording, rejecting and deleting or for further editing or sending over to PS. My 2 cents.

I have the Sigma 150-600 Contemporary and a Nikon D7200 and have gotten good shots of hawks and other birds in flight at 100 yards or more hand-held. I would say that your skill may have as much to do with it as the lens. Practice, practice, practice. I had the Sigma 150-500 previously and it was soft at 500, this lens is good throughout the whole range. I'd have to say the sweet spot is somewhere between 450 and 550 if I was forced to give an answer. Good luck.

Google the phrase "photo bird id" and you'll get to Cornell University's Merlin project. They can identify over 400 North American birds. Upload a file of 4mb or less and follow directions. Good luck.

Thanks everybody. My one unresolved issue is still whether Picasa will be able to upload to Google Photos after they pull the plug on support. There has been mention that some developer APIs will be going away and I may have to adapt to a clunky way to get my photos out there. Or perhaps Lightroom will have a plugin, if they don't already, for Google Photos.

One more thing. I use Lightroom and Photoshop for post-processing. My questions are only about using Picasa/Google Photos for my shared albums and the changes I may need to endure.

I have used Picasa for years to upload photos from African mission tips to Picasaweb and have linked to those albums in my blog, created in Google's Blogger app. All of my content is already available at Google Photos, I haven't had to re-upload anything. I may have lost some captions along the way. I also do a daily photo challenge that I started in 2015 on Facebook and I upload the same photos and descriptions in web-friendly sizes using Picasa to Picasaweb for people to see that are not on Facebook. I just send a link to the album (or Collection in the newspeak Google way of describing it). Several questions. Does anyone know if we will still be able to upload to Google Photos from Picasa after it's no longer supported? Will I need to change all of the links in my 10 year old blog to point to Google Photos or will the Picasaweb Album links still work? Will we still be able to email from Picasa? This is a very useful feature since it automatically downsizes pictures and attaches them to an Outlook or Gmail message. Google is claiming they will give you unlimited space for web friendly shots and a 15GB limit on originals. I use Carbonite and external drives for actual backup, but for sharing albums, the combo of Picasa and Picasaweb has been very good. Thanks in advance for shedding any more light on this. And yes, I have read previous threads, but didn't see these issues addressed. Cheers!

I too had a 150-500 and loved it and yes, a little soft at 500. I bought it from KEH for $625 a couple of years ago and sold it for $500 in great shape recently when I got the Sigma 150-600C, which really is pretty sharp at 600. I'd jump on $400 for that lens in good shape. I bought mine used to see if I could grow into it, if I could use it hand-held (yes I could, the OS is pretty good) and how it might work out on a monopod. I used a pistol grip head on a monopod when birds and other subject will sit still, but was able to pan on bigger birds in flight hand-held. The best of both worlds. You won't be disappointed, if somebody else hasn't snagged it at that price already. Good luck!

You might go one step further as I have. I organize by year and then within that have folders with the name of the shoot and the date in the folder name as well. When I post-process in Lightroom or Photoshop, I export my finished product to a subfolder with the prefix "Edited". Example: Pictures\2016\MillsPondSunset2-22-2016\EditedMillsPondSunset2-22-2016. Even if software goes belly up or changes, like Picasa, the structure is there to find originals and past edits. As my skills and needs change over the years, I can always go back to any original and try something different. Hope this is helpful.

Did anyone else notice that SS actually admitted that a Nikon is a real camera? This is great progress...