My experience is go for the megapixels first (I have been a visual artist for 45 years and I don't care what they say, since I got the first 5 megapixel camera, Canon D60, back around 2001, that has proven to me to best indicator for image quality, if you take pictures of people it means you can can crop out surrounding areas and still have a good picture, it also means a sharper picture, in my search for "the sharp focus" ), then get the most expensive camera you can afford that meets that criterion. With Canon and Nikon, that almost always means more features to make you photography easier. However, too many features may only confuse you, it depends on how serious you take your photography. Today the parameter is 24 megapixels. There may be other features that are important for your own particular preferences, for instance, do you like HDR-maybe you want more than 3 exposures for automatic bracketing. My camera has an articulated viewing screen that flips around, to me that is the second most important feature. It has made my photography twice as easy, especially for difficult angles and viewpoints. You can view your subject from a distance and hold your camera at angles that are even impossible for you to get your eye to the optical viewfinder. However, many more expensive cameras do not have the articulated screen or more megapixels, so for me they need something else, like lowest noise at low light levels, for instance, a constant problem with digital cameras, the proverbial elephant in the room no one talks about. Your particular needs may be different.

I don't think it said that! Don't read into it what isn't there! Oh, were you making a joke? LOL Do you want to expose yourself? Inquiring minds want to know! I would say its ok if you are a good looking female under 30. Go ahead!

:-D

I see a point being made that people do not have to register assault weapons but have to register drones. That is not to say that assault weapons (any gun to my mind is capable of assault) should not be registered. Actually I am against registering firearms. You should not have to register a firearm because they should not be available. I believe it is the duty of society to do everthing in its power to eliminate these things. I know of no other thing in society that a human being can own that at a tiny flick of a finger can take away another persons life. Such a thing has no right to be. It was every fictitious evil wizards dream except in our modern world it is a reality. I know it will not be possible to eliminate ALL guns, but I think the populations of countries that have tried ALL have positive results. Sorry if someone thinks it violates his ammendment rights, personally my knowledge of the english language reads "well regulated m*****a" and that does mean "any citizen". I live in Baltimore by the way which has several facts about it known: it has a majority black population, and guns are proliferate among them to the point that at least once a day somewhere in Baltimore one black person person murders another. Black l***s m****r. No densly populated city needs a populace running around with firearms "to protect themselves"-is the argument the fire breathing d**gon called the NRA gives-but rampant murder is the inevitable result, given the natural state of our human condition. Thus you walk the streets of the city in fear for your life.
As far as registering a drone, it is no different than registering an automobile, just a little one that flies. So what? I do see a future where these giant mosquito like contraptions fly around in chaotic, dense "clouds" smashing into each other and live people causing mayhem and injury. What are you going to do, have drone air 'highways'? Stay in the right lane! will never work.

I too got Lightroom with the Cloud but for the life of me can't figure it out after almost a year now. I too have tried to bypass the catalogue and just use the image processing without much success. They say it doesn't move the originals from your files but when ever I attach my camera or cd/dvd disc files Lightroom seems to want to take them somewhere. My hard drive is filled up and it wants to put them there under "Pictures" Trying to change that, and cataloging in general to take place on an external hard drive seems to take a college degree in LR. I discussed it at a meeting of my photography group of photographers from the Baltimore area, but no one had a good answer, they basically said "just let LR do it the way it wants, storing in "Pictures" on your computers own hard drive. It is only a small data file and not the real image" Yet the books I have read recommend storing actual photograph files in a Lightroom named file so they are not spread out all over. No one here yet seems to know how to answer these questions, the best you get is read a book, talk to a knowledgeable person or just go to another website. Been there, done that, thats why I come here! This has become my "Never Ending Story".

I wouldn't be able to function without a wide angle. Something like an 18-55 zoom will allow you to gather in those tall buildings. Other wise all your shots will be "cropped". NYC just has a wide field of buildings. You can't get a whole building with a normal lense because you can't usually back away enough without having your way blocked by other buildings. A telephoto would be almost useless here except for purely "creative" shots.

I couldn't agree more. I play guitar and am religious about playing a Gibson or a Martin, cheap guitars will not tune all the way up and down the neck. It wasn't untill I got an inheritance though could I afford a Les Paul. BUT all my life I wanted to play guitar and the best I could afford was often an inexpensive one. I could never recommend just not doing anything until you can afford the best. Desire wins out over the quality instrument. Don't ever quit or give up art because you don't have the top of the line instrument. If cheap is all you can do, do it and love the way I have done. Ok, I got my dream Nikon and Nikon lenses after many years but the $250 tripod is still out of reach. I use a $20 Walmart tripod and do quite well, thank you (despite some frustrations). I get the idea some people would tell you not to take a photograph or give it up unless you can afford to buy the expensive high quality brand. To all the newbies and wannabies don't believe it for a second! They say modern music was originated by old guitar players with cheap instruments playing simple blues down in Mississippi, not Mozart on a Stradivarius.

Good Bokeh also depends on the shapes of the forms in the background that are being blurred...you can have a "good" bluring effect from the lens, but because of bad shapes in the background not get something good. I have seen the "good" bokeh with perfect circles behind a face but is dependent on light sources that are "points" of light tone. I have tried it and gotten nice smooth good bokeh but because of the irregular shapes of the particular background light (toned) sources, (and shadows) I got a not so good image in the end. So if you are getting picky about good and bad bokeh you would also have to say that good bokeh does not a good picture make!

Why not try a D5200, for the articulated screen? I have found it invaluable for making taking photographs a LOT easier, using the live view is a little more convenient than squinting through a tiny damn viewfinder, but being able to aim the camera hi, low, any angle and tilt the screen at you perfectly is something I have fallen in love with. I was going to trade up to the 7200, essentially the same camera, for a few extra perks like more automatic bracketed photos per shot, but realized that I almost wouldn't trade that tilt screen ability for anything except maybe a full frame camera.

If you say you don't resize but then say you make the Jpegs fit your email at 2000k you are in effect resizing. images formatted for the web are always of poor quality as they only look good for the web. If you try to put a high definition hi resolution highly detailed image on the web it will be like many megabytes and is not great for fast transport. I paint pictures from emailed photos and too often the people send them with an automatic software system that "optimizes for the web". When I get them and try to enlarge a face for detail all I get is pixels. It can be very hard to get them to send the original Hi resolution file so I can use it. I remember seeing a photo of Marilyn Monroe on the web, looked great although it was only like a half inch big. I downloaded it and put it in photoshop and blew it up and all it just a few squares of colors, couldn't even make out the eyes at all! I am still amazed that the human eye can take such a little amount of data in a small area and create in our brain what appears to be a perfectly detailed face. When it is not.

Never heard of SMTP. What is it?

I have been hesitant to download Windows 10, I have found that over the years the older software programs are increasingly unfriendly with new Operating Systems...when Windows 7 I think it was went to 64 bit from 32 bit it nearly drove me insane trying to use everything that worked fine with the "old, archaic" system. I will watch and hope there are UHH members out there with some savvy on your W 10 problem without saying "go look at place 'x'. I called my nephew who is professional geek and he said he avoids a new system for while to they get the bugs out. (He is a 'bug-finder' for Cisco. he says his job is to try to find glitches, to try find software 'breaks' or even 'try to break things' so they can fix them ahead of time)

Thanks, I will try to do that. It is a good idea...could be the answer...my private messaging has 14 messages on it though, as does my cell phone, not too mention voice mail and my answering machine which has a bunch I am about to erase because it is full..... I just can't keep on top of them all. Face book has changed now and I am getting flooded, thinking of turning it off. (did I mention my email adresses each of which gets tons of messages every day)

Ok I listened to Julianne Kost for 5 minutes on "importing", basically the same as an audio book, no help information wise, maybe if I listen 10 more minutes she will address my question, maybe not. I am getting the idea that lightroom works with "virtual" files, in that they do not alter the original file for instance while in post producton...or something like that, which is why the "catalogue" is not the same as the file folder with your original negatives...which is why someone may erase the originals thinking these virtual files were complete and then lose their pictures, which is what I read at one point has happened to some unlucky photographers who did not understand this. I think this is a crucial point or basic "axiom" that Lightroom is built on, and that you must understand this first before you start doing things with it. I just don't understand it yet, thats all.

Thanks for your reply. Somehow you sidestepped the question completely. I was hoping for someone who understood Lightroom so well they could see my problem and enlighten me. Basically your answer is go watch a video. I get even less from videos, you have to watch it for 15 minutes and maybe it doesn't address the question. You can't just hop in the middle or ask it anything either. I very rarely get anything from a video. I figure if you ask a human being a question you might get an answer instead of rummaging around book, videos, and searches that lead in circles: answer is here!: then a long list of more sites to try. One problem seems to be that lightroom sort of has its own vocabulary, which defines terms within its own system. I need a knowledgable person to translate into terms outside (like a rosetta stone) that system before I can grasp it.

Cheap if you are rich. I have a 3 terrabyte drive too, set me back $125 ("cheap" one too, right? Inferior Western Digital crap said the tech guy at the store) and it is already 30% filled with new photographs, raw format, etc. It is an issue. The more storage space you can get the more you need seems to be the norm) I now do work with layers incessantly, just today I was working on a panorama image, I was already on version 5 which means I had done 5 previous versions, like 10 layers or more, and the computer gets to a point where there are too many layers, and it says cannot save image, over 2 gigabytes. Multiply this by a few hundred images and a terrabyte ain't so big anymore. Sort of like an old 250 mb zipdrive. It is still an issue. I need a Petabyte external drive, for under $50, then it will not be an issue. Yottabyte here we come!