Hey everybody, My very first question here but I trust and honor the members opinions and knowledge here so I will throw this fish out there and I appreciate the feedback.

This month in Texas we have two major airshows. I usually take my Nikon D200 and an old cheap-ass point'n shooter for videos, it has a zoom which I need. But the zoom does not work very well.
My dusty-trusty D200 does not have video. Now this time I have been looking at renting a DSLR from Aperturent in Dallas. They great prices and choices. Since I already have Nikon glass, I am thinking of just renting a DSLR.
The ones they have my glass will work on are:
D500, D810, D850, D7500, D750.
My glass except one, was from my old film camera.
AF 28-80
AF 70-300. I will assume these two are considered kit lenses.
I bought a great lens from a member here. AF VR 80-400. And WOW it is nice too.
So I think the 400 and maybe the 80 will meet my needs. They have in the past.
What I am thinking about is limiting myself to one camera and just the glass.
So, my question of the day is:
Of the DSLR bodies I listed, which one does the group think will deliver me the best fast auto focus and tracking of fast moving planes while I adjust the zoom in and out during the action.

The reason why I want to look into this is because I share these airshow photos and videos with my father. He is 93 and a WWII and Korean veteran. He loves to see my pictures and videos.
I have always done pretty good in the past but I think now is the time to just use one camera for both video and still.
Thank you for reading this long winded request. God bless you all and happy shooting.
Bruce.

Hello HH'ers,
I am going with the wife for a little R&R to Branson, MO in two weeks and hope you will all make suggestions as to where to go in the area (120 mile diameter) to photograph. We have never been there and although we may take in a show and do a walk through the town we are not glitz and glitter tourists. We are really more interested in the great outdoors and enjoyment of God's beautiful Earth. We are an older and severely out of shape couple. We like to hike but cannot handle steep inclines. We are hoping for some Fall color and are looking for flora and fauna. All help is appreciated and we look forward to all responses.

Funny how everyone thinks he's smarter than Thomas Edison because her's screwed in an
LCD lightbulb. And of course, he's a way smarter than Ansel Adams because film is Old
Technology--and a better phographer.

If museums and collectors disagree, well, they're old technology too. The opinions that matter are on
Instagram and Twitter.

Oh, you use a digital sensor! Then optics and sensiometry don''t matter. It's digital! It works by magic,
not science. No need to undersand anythnig--just push buttons. Be a happy button-pusher!

Alas, a photographer isn't just a consumer of techology, he is a producer of it (photographs).

A welder is a producer of welds. He needs to understand something about metalurgy--such as the
difference beween steel and aluminum.. "Oh. but that involves mutli-syllable words! Can't I just
go to a seminar with Sybil the Soothsayer intead?" Sure you can: but you will never be a good welder.
Everything starts with correctly identifying the metal you're working on. For example, f it's magnesium,
you might not want to put a cutting torch to it (just a suggestion).

Automation makes it possible for cameras to capture images without a photographer. I own and use
several trail cameras. They work. But they capture images--not photographs. They are equally willing
to photography the back end of a deer as the front-end of deer. They don't have the concept "deer"--
they just detect motion.

Photography cannot be automated because its a form of communictions and sometimes art. It says
something. Computers have nothing intersting to say. They are not even conscious. I haven't yet seen
one struggle when I take it to the recycler. Their marveloous at calculation, and at great effort and
expense can be made to play board games. Impressive, but then, so is a giant excavator. We don't
expect steam shovels to produce art.

Of course any company is going to hype it's products. If you make cameras, the unit cost will soar
if you try to increase the resolution. It's far more profitable to hype the technology: "buy our new
sub-minature format camera because it uses AI! And the lenses have nano-pixie-dust coatings!"

Consumers have always smiled at "scurbbing bubbles", "lemon-freshened borax" and "sparkling drop
ff retsin", But now they no longer smile--they believe.

The differnece now is that all the technology companies are hyping technology: billions of dollars
worth of adverstising, fake reviews and bought journalism. And so consumers buy into it.

The "Pepsi Generation" was good ad campaign, but nobody thought (I hope) that there was such
a thing. That's because Coca-Company was sending out a very differnt message. But now Google,
Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Nikon, Canon and Sony are all putting out the same message: more
technology is always better! More automation is always better! Newer is always better!

But of course, it has to be admitted that technology has solved most of our problems. There is
no more global warming. Airliners no longer crash. Cars accidents are unknown. Every American
has access to good public transporation. Power blackouts are unknown. Hurricanes, floods and
wild fires no longer endanger our cities and towns. Cancer has been cured and so has the common cold.
The nuclear threat and terrorism have been eliminated. And thanks to digital voting machines, democracy
has finally triumphed around the world.

But that's not quite true, is it? New York County just declared a measles epidemic. A vaccine
for measles has been available since 1963. But parents don't understand the science behind
vaccines, so they believe crap they read on the Internet and don't vaccinate their children. They
can't be pursuaded, because they don't understand the difference between a Youtube video and
a journal article in JAMA or The New England Journal of Medicine.

Techology is only useful when when people understand the science behind it.. Otherwise, it's just
another form of voodoo. You cannot know what you are doing unless you know what you are doing.

Fewer and fewer Americans bother to learn science and mathematics---the foundation of all technology.
(And when they do learn math, it's only applied math and the "cookbook appraoch": "if you see this
formula, use this integral"). Anyone can teach that--but it takes a mathematician to teach proofs.

Engineer schools have proliferated -- there are now somehting like 4000 in the world!---but most (even
in the USA) no longer bother to teach thermodynamics to electronics engineers. (Ever wonder why so much
electronic stuff overheats?). Today most EEs are really "logoneers", they only know how to plug digital
inputs into outputs. It's getting very hard to find an EE who can design a power supply that won't catch
fire or a radio that will work. Heaven help the company that needs to design an antenna (ask Apple about
the iPhone 4).

Well, we don't need power supplies or radios anymore--that's "old technology".

There's been another huge change: now, thanks to sofware and firmware, the costs of increasing
complexity are now hidden. If you add another gear to a clock, you just increased the parts count
and the unit cost. But if you add a line of code to a program, you don't incrase the parts count
unless it fills up all the RAM. The only limit on complexity is the number of RAM chips you can
pack into the box.

The old rule of programmers was "K.I.S.S" -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. Because a simple program
can be validated: mathematically proven to be correct. More complex source code can only be
inspected. But soon it reaches the point that all the King's horses and all the King's men cannot
tell whether humptydumpty.exe is correct. (If you don't believe me, ask the crew of Lion Air
Flight 610.)

Both elecro-mechanical elevators and digital computers are examples of "finite-state machines".
A elevator might have 20 or 30 different states. But it's comon for computers running software
or firmware to have billions of states.. Some have so many that if you tested them by entering each
state for 1 second, the sun would burn out before you finished. So they are impossible to
exhaustively test. The only hope is have a modular design, where test jigs can be written to test
each module spearately.

But the emphasis in the technology industry isn't on moduler design or error-free code, it's on getting
the product to market quickly and cheaply. Tech products have a limited shelf life--if you wait to long
to release it, it's obsolete. And the kind of strict discipline and accountability requried to run a good
software development shop are very rare in American corporate culture. It used to be found in the
telecomm industry and defense conractors, but even that has faded.

Consumers know better than to buy nuclear reactors (or is it just that they can't afford one?).
But they buy and rely on software and firmware without giving it a second thought. They even
trust their life to it. I'm sure than none of the passengers--on that doomed flight thought that
software was going to kill them that day.

The combination of smart devices and stupid or deluded people is extremely dangerous. A workman
must know the limitations of his tools. No technology is immune from Murphy's Law. Complexity
always comes at a cost. Do not trust a wild animal or a computer--it's not your friend. Trust only
what you understand well enough to know when it's gone haywire--and what to do about it.

A camera or home computer is unlikely to kill you (unless it burns the house down), but it can
waste enormous amounts of time and money. If its' connected to the Internet, it can make you
the victim of theft, fraud, extortion, blackmail or espionage.

Blind reliance on technology and neglect of science and education is the quicked route to a Dark Age.

Already, for many Americans, technology comes from "somewhere else" not their town, and maybe not
their state. Probably your local pubilc library does not subscribe to any science or engineering journals.
Probalby it has books on science and mathematica (history, biographies, "fluff" and "hand-waving")
but not of science and mathametics. There was a time when American school children used a book
full of proofs--Euclid's Elements of Geometry -- as a textbook. Dated as that work is, it contains
real, live mathematics.

The goal of progress isn't to enable everyone to be ignorant and waited on by machines--the way
a helpless, bloated queen bee is fed and cleaned by worker bees. It to make everything better, safer and
more controllabe, so that events like Chernobyl, Fukashima, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, Lion Air
Flight 610 and Malasian Airlines Flight MH370 become a thing of the past--like the Black Plague.

Instead, we are afflicted by a plague of software bugs, endangering the very fabric of our society:
transportation, communications, banking, defense. At the individual level, our security, privacy and
finances are being compromised. But people put their faith in invisible beings and/or Technology--
because that is what they are told to do---rather than in themselves.

Photographers at least should be able to control their own destiny. A least they have a choice: all
photography is optical, but it is only chemical, electrical, electronic or computerized if you want
it to be.

Even with a microrprocesor controlled digital camera (an "embedded system") you have choices:
you can insist on buttons and knobs, not menus. You can insist on an optical viewfinder (that
doesn't drain the battery). For that matter, you can insist on standard batteries. You can insist
on an industry standard for lens mounts and raw mode file format.

The monopolists and technology robber barons are counting on you to be passive consumers,
buying whatever they chose to make available. Don't. Vote your dollars for something that
is reliable, repairable, understandable and taht will last for decades (like your father's,
grandfather's and great-grandfather's cameras did). Tell them you want the Apollo Program,
not the Space Shuttle.

Just bought Steve Perry's new book - "Secrets To Exposure and Metering for Nikon". What a great job. I'm 300+ pages in (out of the 600+). I have never seen such a comprehensive work on a camera system. It is jam-packed with info that explains how Nikon's cameras work and the reasoning behind what he uses. I love his style - some humor mixed with logically explained and excellently illustrated examples. As Steve might put it - "It's as sweet as a candy dippers handshake". I'm a retired senior with a lot of amateur experience on several continents.

Thanks, Steve. Continued success and all the best.