Olympus e-420 with 14-42 lens. 3x crop factor means 35mm equvelant of 28-84. Kit with battery weighs less than 1.5#. A second lens, 40-150 (80-300) is just another 8oz. Can be found on ebay and Amazon, in very good shape, for as low as $150. Takes very pretty pictures.

Oh, and a Ziplock bag for the sudden rain shower.

Glad you said that. When I read that article some time ago I had the feeling that either I was an idiot or (at least in this case) he was. Whew!

Lightweight, adjustable shooting stick. Less than ten bucks, about 8oz, and collapses to about 18". And no messing with screws.

1.6 billion, 1.6 trillion - these numbers are all over the web. A lot of this talk started with an article by Tom Roberson in the American Thinker. He is a conservative Tea Party guy and was trying to make a point about how unnecessarily large and inefficient the Federal government is by reporting (incorrectly, he admits) on a large ammunition purchase by the National Weather Service. So this guy is a conservative, Tea Party leader, who is no fan of Obama and in this article he refutes and debunks all these conspiracy theories about Federal ammo purchases. In the article he says:

"Hundreds of millions of ammo rounds purchased for some fifty obscure government agencies starts to bring the size of the federal government into focus. It is huge folks! The government isn’t planning anything nefarious. It’s just so large that it requires this much ammo on a yearly basis. It was not my intention to stoke the flames of conspiracy theorists intent on constructing elaborate explanations that feed their desire to see something nefarious behind every good intention. I merely sought to highlight the size of the federal government in terms one could grasp."

http://tomroberson.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/conspiracy-theory/

" Basic Firearms Qualification:

1. On a 25-yard range, equipped with POST approved P-1 targets, the student, given a pistol or revolver, holster and 240 rounds of ammunition, will fire the POST firearms qualification course at least four times....

Just from one police department website and less than half the roilunds discussed but you get the point.


http://www.lcle.la.gov/programs/post.asp

The Fox article, from back in August, mentions that the SSA has 295 armed operatives across the country. 174,000 rounds of hardly exotic .375 ammo, for training purposes, works out to less than 600 rounds per shooter. As an ex-target shooter I'm glad to see they are serious about keeping up with their time on the range. On a weekly basis you can blow through 600 rounds in no time. A non-story sensationalized.

I have been using one for years with no problem. In my bag and I'm not too gentle with it. I would recommend Toshiba.

I don't know about Nikon but Olympus also has upgrades for their lenses (which I forgot about). 5 minutes hooked up to the PC last week turned a mediochre long zoom into a nice tool. Almost thought of getting rid of that lens.

Well if I didn't I guess I would be shooting JPEG and not RAW.

PixelFlash 3.0.

No more bent pins. Works great and is VERY inexpensive.

http://www.amazon.com/PixelFlash-No-Bend-Compact-SuperSpeed-Adapter/dp/B005IMFX2K/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1360234111&sr=8-2&keywords=cf+card+reader

And don't certain sites have built in protections against downloading photos? I know certain levels of Flickr do and so does 500px (although for some reason I can download from 500px to my 'droid.)

But then you probably wouldn't share it with anyone either, right? :?

I think some of this has do with maturity - not age, but the longer you practice this and share it with people, the more you look at other's work that you admire and how they handle things like this, the more you learn and mature. The work I won't sign (or share) today might very well have made me proud earlier in the game. I look back on some of my earlier stuff and am mortified, often taking them down from sites. It's how we learn. So I tend not to be too terribly tough on those photos I see that maybe aren't necessarily (what I think is) state of the art. Because I realize how much I still have to learn myself. A lot.

Well, as some people like to say here, "horses for courses". But are only the people who are paid for their art deserving of credit? (and of course that would be a minute percentage of all artists, including serious photographers, out there) As a child, taking art lessons, I remember my teacher insisting that I sign my first painting. I was very self critical and thought it was not worth doing so. She rebuked me, saying that she thought it was very good, but that I would get better and that I should be proud of my work. Later, when I was older, in high school, I remembered being a little concerned that there was no way to sign a sculpture I had entered in a contest at the county fair. I was relieved to see that a little placard was placed in front of all the exhibits with our names.

Ego? Yes. Pride? Certainly.

No problem.

Exactly. Well said.

I thought I was.