The short answer (as already stated) is: NO!

However, for serious landscape photography you probably are not racing around, and a tripod using mirror-up is always a major plus to quality.

I completed a trip to the Amalfi Coast of Italy. Made over 5000 exposures in an exhausting 6 days and did not notice any significant problem with mirror vibration. This trip was performed almost exclusively hand held due to shooting in very confined spaces. Most of the time a tripod would have been a liability and just begged for someone to trip over it, injuring themselves and banging up the camera.

Each to his own. Before turning into 'art' it must stand on its own as a photograph.

Personally, I do not prefer the oversaturated appearance that is prevalent today. I like subtlety of a more pastel color range.

Whether your work is 'good' or not is irrevelant. What do you think of your results? Your are the only person that you have to please.

MAC MAC MAC

I finally dumped the PC and the Windows insecurity. My Macs perform flawlessly.

Be sure to get ample RAM, purchase the biggest hard drive you can afford, and invest in secure external archiving such as a RAID 5 (bought mine from Other World Computing), but there are many good units available with an array of interfaces.

Photography has really changed little since its inception. It still is an art of visualization and the craft of transferring your individual visualization of a scene onto a medium that expreses our emotional reaction to the scene.

What has dramatically changed are the tools we have available to reach our interpretative goal. I dare say that even in the days of the wet darkroom, development is post processing and can be varied to reach the expressive goal.

Personally, I am glad that I no longer have to mix chemicals, worry about silver pollution, lung damage, and cracked fingers from too long immersion of the chemical stews.

The problem with post processing, is that the world now thinks that we live in a 'supersaturated' world of bold color when, in fact, most colors are muted and subtle. Most people do not know HOW to approach post processing. But that is another line of discussion.

Have a Pro 4600. VERY HAPPY. Has gone up to two months (not recommended) without printing without any evidence of nozzle clogs.

I like the Hannemuehle (sp?) papers especially Museum Etching. Great archival quality. Beautiful white.

Old disease just new name. Became Nikon addict in 1972 while stationed in Japan. Multiple generations of lenses and camera bodies since. It is like a fungus, it just grows slowly and insinuates itself into your very being. You are helpless so just surrender but try to control the rate of acquisition.

Now about the Travel Bug that NAS and CAS fire up!

Santa Fe Workshops is taking groups to Cuba in January 2012 - with State Department approval so flying from Miami direct. Don't know if there are any open spots left.

I am looking forward to going back to the 1950s - from the standpoint of automobiles!

Again, another fascinating location is the Bristlecone Forest in the White Mountains of Southern California. Especially great if you can arrange to have clouds moving in from the northwest.

Too many places. Too little time. Oh I can't wait for retirement to kick in as a full time occupation.

Here's my three

Iceland
Eastern Sierras - all seasons
Puget Sound islands

I have been very happy with my new Nikon 28-300 VR zoom. I don't see any significant abberations. After lugging around a pack stuffed with D3, several lenses, a medium format and a small lens selection, it is a relief to be able to carry a tripod, camera, and one lens on tours and be comfortable that I we be able to do a respectable job of capturing what moves me.

HTH

Bob

Try Super Duper. This is available for free if you want basic cloning ability. Use it all the time to close all drives on my MacPro. Will make copy a bootable drive if you want. That is my main use - weekly backups of boot drive via 'Black X' external USB drive so I always have 2 up-to-date copies.

Of course all data (read pics) are on an external RAID 5 eSATA drive from Other World Computing (very quiet and sitting right on the desktop).

HTH