First sign up for a on-line conference with Topaz - they are having one today at 3 PM CST looking at the whole suite plus you get a discount code that can save up to 30%

New Features in Lightroom 4 Beta
•Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
•Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.
•Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
•White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
•Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
•Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
•Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr®.
•Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
•Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

very good book

You also can change your speed in Apature by changing your ISO

I had problems with LR 4 at first when I imported the photos the develop module was the old one with this advice You need to swap the process to 2012. It will stay on 2010 for images already processed in LR3. It's the bottom section of develop or click the ! on the photo.

John Stuart-Clarke You can't convert a catalogue yet as it's a beta and there may be dragon which will cook the catalogue. They are recommending you import some copies and play around with those. It's quite easy to get your old setting through by exporting the xmp files before you're import.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2012/01/4267.html The intro video is certainly worth a watch by anyone having a go at this.
No problems and I cannot wait to upgrade. I will be one of the first in line now probably 99% of my post processing will be light room rather than 85%

Down load this PDF from Moose peterson It rteally helps with printing http://www.moosepeterson.com/downloads/Moose_PrintLab_Printing.pdf

the sigma 50-500 is a good lens Robert Otoole says for sharp pictures f8 and at least 1/100 sec. I would keep the lens you have and upgrade your camera a D7000 is faster better noise at higher ISO

WHAT WAS YOUR SHUTTER SPEED? FLASH ?????

Camera on Manual focus manual lens set to infinity
All the times and f-stops are for 200 ISO, so you’ll have to adapt for other ISOs
• Full moon, or moon more than half visible: 1/60 sec. at f/16
• Half to one-quarter of the moon visible: 1/30 sec. at f/16
• Less than one-quarter of the moon visible: 1/15 sec. at f/16
• Just the edge of the moon lit: 1 sec. at f/16
• Fully eclipsed at beginning and end of totality: 4 sec. at f/5.6
• Fully eclipsed, deepest totality: 8 sec. at f/5.6
this works great, hope it helps

I think that is the thing to consider. The quality difference between my 12mp D2X and D3 is amazing. The improvements in noise, color fidelity, RAW files and processing are far more important than more pixels.[/quote]

How true

First a refurb done by the Company means it it just like new. Ibought a refurb Nikon D3 for 41000 LESS THAN A NEW ONE AND HAVE NOT HAD ANY PROBLEMS. I feel that you need to get a book on the D7000 and learn how to use all tghe features. you will love it

There is a learning curve for focusing with the D7K, read the manual and also buy the D7000 book from rocky knoll
URL at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Nikon-D7000-Darrell-Young/dp/1933952806. it will help you

I use Topaz DeNoise and for me it does the best job better than NIK Noise reduction plug-in

All my instructers post processing with LR or PS and on their workshops have session on PP. In my film days spent hours in the darkroom with cropping, dodge and burn to get the photograph that I envisioned now I sit in front of my computer doing the same thing. Less worry about toxic chemicals

Upgrade to the 7000. Aim higher