I am going to Europe on a cruise vacation, traveling to places including Greece and Turkey. As I am sure there are some areas where theft of cameras is an issue, I decided to buy a Canon SX710 camera. To get a little practice, I took 50 or so pictures in my yard, and looked at them on my computer, and to my disappointment they have more grain then I had expected, even at low ISO's such as 80 or 100. The grain is not really noticeable when I look at the uncropped picture, but when I zoom in the grain shows up quite a bit, even in the sky. I have the contrast set to normal, not high, and have shot in both AUTO and program mode with a fixed aperature. Is this to be expected with a point an shoot? Perhaps my reference of my 5d Mark III is too much of a stretch, as I don't get any grain with that camera until I get up to ISO 3200.

I always lean towards the lowest f-stop camera I can afford. I use my lens indoors and out, and I don't want to be caught having to rely on a flash all the time when indoors. Plus, for me, even outdoor pictures are better with a lower f-stop with the higher shutter speed particularly if you plan on cropping. Things outside do move. If you are shooting a scene on a lake, the little ripples are moving, the leaves on the trees are too. Boats off in a distance move, and your camera shakes even for the best photographers. There are also birds moving, or a squirrel, falling water etc.. Using a camera that cannot shoot high shutter speeds without resorting to high ISO are for me simply not crisp enough. I have had quite the experience with flowers too. If you are shooting flowers outdoors, the flowers move quite a bit, as do any insects on the flowers. If you are using a lens with a higher f-stop, you have to resort to high ISO's and then things start to get grainy. Anyway, that's why I buy f-stops as low as 1.4 or 2.8.

I don't believe Lithium batteries need to be conditioned like the NiCD.

$900-$1000 is the going price for this camera. Amazon has this as a used item purchase, and it lists for just under $1000. I have one, and was planning on selling on Amazon, with the same price. No, it does not come with a warranty card, none of them do, unless you buy it as a new item, which makes no sense. The warranties have long expired.

A few of the 380's are being used for a singe person. Of course it hauls their entourage as well, such as the rich folks from Saudi, Emirates etc.,

I shoot with two memory cards usually, a 256 gb for the RAW and a 64GB for the JPEG, recorded simultaneously. I do tend to save the RAW ones on the higher gb card, as it is a 256 gb. I often times don't get to delete the ones I don't want, and actually rarely spend all that time to delete. I tend to scan them, pick out some special ones, and save on my hard drive, then when I get more time I will delete off the card. I use two cards, the 256 gb for the RAW, and a 64 gb for the JPEGs. Why shoot JPEG, well many times I find the JPEG is just fine without tinkering. I use the RAW if there is a reason for me to post process,

Bassman had it right, about a million. For soccer games, I shoot about 200 a game. Hard to get good action shots of a single person in particular, with hands flying all over the place, or out of focus, missed the shoot etc.. Everytime you get a potentially good picture, bracket it with a half dozen shots before and after. With digital picture taking, there is really no reason to not take hundreds of pictures. I have an upcoming cruise, and usually in two weeks I will shoot 2000-3000 pictures. The sky is the limit with a 256 gb memory card. Unless of course you go video at a grandkids birthday party. That sucks up the memory, but still never ran out.

Do those with the Nikon 810 have the same problem?

Apple made a choice, I am sure a well thought out business decision to do away with Aperture. I for one went to Adobe a long time ago, not because Aperture was bad, but because I liked the Adobe CS6 better.

Another thing I have found is the RAM memory tends to get filled with stuff and doesn't clear itself. I downloaded the app FreeMemory, and use it to clear the information in memory not in use. It works particularly well just prior to opening Topaz Detail, which takes a lot of RAM. I find when I am on the internet, and if you watch the memory indicator at the top of the screen which you get with free memory, the RAM fills up, even with 16 gb. It can usually be cleared by closing tabs in your browser, particularly ones that use imbedded videos. For sure, before you use lightroom or Adobe, the best thing to do is close your browsers. I even restart the computer at times.
If anyone out there knows why the RAM fills up but won't always self clear even after closing my browser, I am all ears.

Ditto for the store in Cincinnati. But sometimes they have to order things for you, don't have them in stock. Particularly lenses.

Guess I don't really understand the "learning curve" people associate with Mac's. I guess if your frame of reference and understanding is Windows 8, then yes, there will be a learning curve.
I went from a PC to a Mac in 2007. There was little in the way of learning curve. You turn it on, you open your MS Office software, and its basically the same. Same for Photoshop, and most other programs. As for the operating system, and things like file finder, they are very easy. Mail, I stuck with Google mail, so I simply go on Google which is the same. Forget Safari, it's too slow.

As for the above, I highly doubt there is going to be much difference between Yosemite and El Capitan.

Lastly, I think the price will be the same if you buy the computer at the Apple store versus Best Buy. I would go with the Apple store for sure if you have one near you. As for RAM, get 32 if you can spring for he extra bucks. I have 16 in my Imac, and sometimes if I have too much open, I run out of RAM. I have an older Imac, so I am at the limit of RAM. I plan on getting a new IMac in the next year or so, and will get the I7 processor, 32 gb Ram, and the top end video card so I can go dual screen easily.

I see sensor size mentioned a lot, and yes that does impact the number of pixels, but the sensor size is not changing for the most part between cameras. The sensor size on a Canon 5dmkIII is the same size as the new 5DS.

What is changing is the size of the pixel, when the pixel count goes up on the same size sensor. For instance the pixel size on the 5D is 6.24 micrometers, the 5DS is 4.14 micrometers. This of course means you can stuff a whole lot more pixels on the same size sensor. The size is actually the square of these numbers, as the dimension is listed as each side of a square pixel.

The pixel size is for the Nikon 810 is as you would expect in between at 4.88.

That said, yes the other factors all impact IQ, shake, lens, shutter speed which is a compensation for shake.

I would love to take a bunch of pictures with the 810 or 5DS myself to see if it makes a difference. I do like cropping a lot of my pictures, such as flowers, so the higher pixels would make difference for me, but only if the camera is very steady when I take the picture.

Yes, works great, good, clear pictures. If you want sound though, you may not get it if you are too far away from your subject. But yes, very good for some short videos, a minute or two. But it is not a video camera per se. I rarely use video, as I am not a video fan. As for your memory card, get a big capacity one if you want to do a lot of video work. 64gb or more.

Photo or just a general all in one. I have been happy with the canon MX920. Scans, does ok with photos, copies, faxes. It's $99. The biggest benefit is you can get really inexpensive ink cartridges on Amazon for about $1 apiece, and they work beautifully, and have a normal life. I just ordered another pack of cartridges. They were on sale for $29 for a package of 32, mixed colors and blacks. You can get all one color too, such as black.

I have two of these printers, both are 2 years old, doing fine so far.