Hi Michele,

Welcome to the "HOG" from a fellow Houstonian. I see that you are getting plenty of good advice from other members so, I will not opine on picking a camera. However, since you are located in Houston, I did want to make sure you knew about your local camera store, The Camera Exchange. Located on Richmond Ave., they have a wide variety of used gear that has been inspected and rated for condition. Large selection and prices are outstanding, in my opinion. I promise, I don't work there! Haha!

Here is a link: https://hcehouston.com/

In any case, happy shooting and good luck!

Randy

Minor correction: The D500 is a crop sensor camera, not full frame.

I would just bring in the left edge from the wider shot. There is nothing but grey there. But don't cut into the railing of the tower to provide a sense of place. I would also look at it in a grid and rotate to make the largest lateral line (the platform) perfectly level. If you had an even wider shot, I would probably start with that.

This is a merge of two night shots, taken with a Nikon D3x and Nikon 17-35mm 2.8. The sparks are from what I am sure most recognize as a long exposure of burning steel wool, spun overhead from a whisk. The sky is southeast in May, central Texas.

Sparks: 30 sec., f8, ISO 640
Sky: 30 sec., f2.8, ISO 1600

This jpeg does not look as good as the tif output, but for some reason the site crashed twice trying to upload the tif.

(Download)

I like them. Especially #2.

24-70 2.8

Wow! Great capture of a super shy, often heard but rarely seen, animal. Out in the open in broad daylight too. Must have been in an important mission. Look at those massive ears! Love it!

Nice

Wow! One of the best bee captures I have seen. Well done!

These are really nice. I like the perspective from to 11 but the tilt of the boardwalk is somehow distracting as compared to the more level shot with the 24. I know that's what is there, so I may have panned the 24 to the left to get that beautiful water and mirror effect. I like the sky in the 24 better too. Please know these comments are intended to be constructive. Both are beautiful.

Richard,
I love the loader shot! Great work!

YES! I hate that!

Brenham, TX

(Download)

By "chip," I think you must be talking about SD card where images are stored inside the camera before downloading and formatting. Yes?

Your D80 is about a 10 mega-pixel camera and can shoot in different formats and JPEG compressions. So these settings will ultimately determine the maximum number of frames you can store on the SD card before downloading and formatting the card (erasing it). That being said, an SD card as small as 8 GB would allow you to shoot about 1,000 images at the "fine" JPEG compression before having to download images and formatting the card.

Here is a link to the manual: http://download.nikonimglib.com/archive1/3PBoc00MJ7vb00PxKru74a9gED26/D610_NT(En)01.pdf