I take the D700's little sister, the P7000 (now the P7100).
It truly is a compact subset of the D700. You will know how to use it almost 'out of the box.'

One feature I really like for candid shooting is BSS, that is, 'best shot'. It takes three pictures of the same image, examines them and saves only the sharpest. Great for low lever light shots. Also includes bracketing and continuous.

Check out its specs at the nikonians forum in the compact cameras forum where is has a separate listing. I don't recall if dpreview has reviewed it. If all else fails, go to nikonusa.com.

With the advent of the P7100, the P7000 may be available as a 'refurbished' item.

Good luck and a joyous trip!

I suspect he (?) is referring to threads that go beyond he first page.

My observation is that they are displayed in the chronological order in which they are received.

Yes, but vary the opacity of the stamp as you move content over the white objects so they still show but not as bright.

Wow! taken on Fiji Island, I presume. ;>)

Terrific! I'm headed down the street this evening.

I presume you shot Shutter priority at about one second.

Correct? If not, please advise.

Settings, please!

Arte Johnston: Unbelievagable!

Do a search on 'Christmas Lights' from the SEARCH tab at the top of this page. Exhaustive thread, including complete recommended camera settings.

Go to the top of the screen and do a search on "refurbished".
(It's under the heading, "SEARCH".)
There was a great thread on the top about a week ago.

The refurbished item has gone through abn extra step of quality control.
Many new cameras coming off the line go through NO quality control.
The consensus was that the refurbished is actually better than "new".

OK, we go with what satisfies us. No argument there.

HOW-SOME-EVER . . . .

The RAW file presents the image precisely as the sensor recorded it.That is, what was the amplitude of the R, G and B detectors at each pixel cluster in the sensor. No processing! You do not allow the camera to make any decisions as to what the image should look like to the human eye. YOU make all the decisions in processing the RAW data in your RAW processing program (ACR in Nikon territory).

Further, that RAW data file is NEVER altered and is never over-written as long as you have it stored, no matter how many times you edit it or how many times you access and save it from an editing session. All editing steps are logged in a separate file which is stored along with the image file and are executed on the RAW file each time you load the RAW image.

When you save that image back to your file, the image is not saved. The original image is still in the file it was in when you loaded it. What is saved is the .xmf file which contains a log of everything you did in the editing session.

If you load the image file again, it is loaded just as it came out of the camera and is processed again with all the edit steps logged in that .xmf file.

If you delete that log file (it's .xmf in Nikon territory) you will load the image exactly as it came from the camera originally with no editing whatsoever.

You cannot save an edited image as a RAW file. The only source for any
RAW file is the camera. And the only content is the amplitude of each R, G or B sensor at each point the lens transmitted to the sensor.

When you load that image into your editing program, it is loaded as modified by that editing session as part of the loading process. BUT it is no longer a RAW file. You have to save it as a .jpg, .tiff .dng or some other format. You cannot resave it as a RAW file. Your original RAW file is still sitting in its folder, precisely as it came out of the camera. You NEVER overwrote that file!

For the .jpg file, the camera makes a host of decisions as to how the human eye would interpret what it is seeing. It also compresses the data that the sensor recorded.

(Compare the size of a RAW file to its JPG file. The difference is pixels you have thrown away in converting the file to jpg.) AND every time you save that .jpg file, it is compressed again, even if you made no changes in it since you loaded it, throwing away still more pixels.

***************
I cannot imagine any test that would demonstrate that a .jpg file is better than a RAW file. I can concede that an individual may prefer the appearance of the .jpg file to that person's editing of a RAW file.

*************
For emphasis . . . . A raw file is NEVER overwritten. It is ALWAYS in the state it was in when retrieved from the camera.

If you have "Mirror UP" in your custom settings, try that. Most of the noise comes from the mirror slamming up out of the way very fast when you release the shutter.. The Nikon D700 mirror slap sounds precisely like a rifle being cocked!

Note that with Mirror up, you will not have an image on the LCD display.

Charles, your effort in replying so thoroughly is appreciated.

However, I had considerable difficulty in reading it. It would help all of us greatly if you were to make use of frequent paragraphing.

The lines in the posted messages are so long that it is difficult to scan across the entire screen with such a heavy block of text.

(Hopefully a helpful suggestion. Not a criticism.)

[Rats! Uploaded the reply window prematurely.
To continue . . . .]

If you get rid of that .xmp file, your original image will be loaded without any previous editing. You get rid of the .xmp file by going to your Windows Explorer program (or its equivalent in other operating systems), find the file with the name of your original RAW image and delete the accompanying .xmp file with the same name.

In Windows Bridge, the thumbnail images that are displayed in Bridge will have an icon in the upper right corner that alerts you that there is an accompanying .xmp file for that image and if you load the image, all previous editing actions will be applied in the process.

Although this data is displayed in the Metadata window of Bridge, I could not delete or alter it there. I had to go to Windows Explore to delete the .xmp file.

FOR EMPHASIS: The original RAW file is NEVER altered.

Not quite.
The original RAW file is retained in its original folder.
HOWEVER! Along with that file is a file with the same name but the extension .xmp. That file contains a log of everything you did to the parent file while in the RAW program.

When you load a file that has been edited in RAW, the ORIGINAL file is loaded along with the .xmp file. In the loading process, every editing you did on that file is applied to the original file as it is loaded. So you are presented with the original image PLUS all the editing you have done to that image.

REPEAT:

Change the name of your image and save it under that new name (to protect your image in its original form).

Copy the image to a new layer with a mask filled with white. It will look like an exact duplicate of the original image. Change the blend mode from normal to screen. That will lighten the entire layer, bringing out the interior. Adjust the layer opacity slider to get the interior to where you want it. The lights will be overexposed now.

Now for what we're really after! Click on the mask in the new layer. That will direct the next changes you make to operate only on the mask , not the image.

Chose a soft brush tool, set the foreground color to black. Paint over the lights. That will block any effects you have created on that layer where you paint, restoring only those areas to their original exposure. Adjust the opacity of the brush to control the degree of that blocking.

If you accidentally paint outside the lamps, change your foreground color to white and paint where you want to cancel the blocking to recover the layer's effect where you paint.

Painting on a mask in Black blocks a layer's effects.
Painting on a mask in White shows the layer's effects.

Good luck!