Wonderful shot. That lens is amazing even with the TC. I am attaching one I took last week with the old 400 mm f/5.6 on a 5D iv with a Kenko 1.4 TC (just for comparison). Also hand-held. I am now saving for the lens you have!

Exactly. It is like asking what is the best screwdriver? If you want to hammer nails the question makes no sense. I have a Canon 5D iv that I would never dream of taking backpacking. For that I have a Sony Nex-3 16MP and it is amazing. I have a Sony a6000 for travel.

I would second what Haydon said and her images are beautiful.

The Sony has an EVF. I suggested the RX100 iii because of the EVF and the 24mm - 70mm (FF equivalent) lens (earlier versions don't have an EVF).

Another possibility is the Sony A6xxx series (although, except the A6000 itself, most are out the price range you mentioned) -- all have EVFs and the power zoom the A6000 comes with is OK (but there are mixed opinions on that). The A6000 itself can function well as a P&S but has the advantage of being an interchangeable lens body.

My main camera is a Canon 5D iv so I am not pushing Sony per se but the RX100 is very nice. The Sony menu system is not the best but once set up you can almost forget about it if you want it to be P&S. The only issue is that you can accidentally put it into a weird mode (e.g., watercolor) and so one needs to be a bit vigilant.

I'd suggest the Sony RX100 iii. $598 @B&H with card, charger and case.

As others have said, you can copy the RAW and jpgs to separate directories. A good exercise is to open the SOOC .jpg version and the RAW version and then experiment with the sliders to try to get the RAW to look just like the .jpg. Also, you can get presets that do a first cut on the RAW image. Once you're happy getting the RAWS to look like the .jpgs you can move on to making them possibly look better.

I don't know specifically but the instructions here might help.

http://neptunephoto.com/spec_sheet.html?catalog[product_guids][0]=303712

You'll lose two stops and since it's an f5 to f6.3 lens you'll lose autofocus because, as been pointed out, your bodies will only autofocus at or below f 8. I have a 400m f/5.6 and a 2x extender but it is an almost unusable combo on a 5d Mark iv. The 1.4 extender works quite well with that lens, though.

What is the camera and tripod? How heavy are they? What lenses do you use?

The camera is attached to the tripod by a single screw. When people throw the tripod + camera over their shoulder the torque can be quite high and enough to break the screw. Or the screw can come loose. It's not a good idea to transport the camera + tripod together. If you have a quick release plate on the camera it's a simple matter to attach to the tripod as necessary. if you're using a tripod it's unlikely that time is a factor so I'd get a strap for the camera and, if the tripod is to heavy to carry, you could get some sort of wheeled shopping or wheeled golf cart (as others have suggested) for the tripod.

I think that's correct -- I don't usually use DPP and always use my own preset on import in LR. Thanks for the clarification.

Sharpness settings, etc., in-camera have no effect on RAW.

Pelican Valley is usually good for bison and birds.

What's interesting is that your formula gives an answer that is quite close to the actual value -- only about 15% off. That's because, for small arguments Tan[x] ~ x (as long as x is in radians). So the factors of 2 almost cancel themselves out for small-enough angles with the error being much worse for larger angles; 39.6 degrees is small enough that the error, while noticeable, isn't really that large. For an 18mm lens the error becomes essentially infinite!

Cat,

I think you have the formula incorrect. Plus, you need to use radians when calculating the Tangent. If I do the calculation then it is

Tan[Pi*39.6/(2*180)]= (w/2)/100 m.

where Pi/180 is the conversion from degrees to radians. Solving this for w gives you 72 m. The relevant angle is half the angular FOV (which is why there is a factor of 2 in the denominator in the argument of the Tan function) and the "opposite" side of the triangle calculated is actually 1/2 the width. See the link below and go to Derivation-of-the-angle-of view formula for the diagram.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view

EDIT: the "navy" formula relies on the fact that the triangles shown in the diagram in the link above are "Similar triangles." However, the relevant distance S2 is not necessarily the focal length but it is a good approximation to it. In the calculation of the width by the previous poster using the navy formula, 36mm (the horizontal dimension of the sensor) should have been used rather than 35mm and doing so also gives 72m.

Edit2: It looks like you calculated the Tan correctly but you missed a factor of "2" in two places (in the angle and in the width).

Does these help?

https://www.lensation.de/calculator.html (this seems to not do FF sensors)

http://www.giangrandi.ch/optics/focalcalc/focalcalc.shtml