In the interim since I posted I've found what I was doing wrong on the display and am back to being histogram free! Yay!!! One down and one to go.
Now to tackle the bracketing.
Thanks,

Rick

First off; this is entirely MY fault. I know I've set something in a menu somewhere that has changed my screen presentation to a small shot of the picture I'm trying to take and red, blue, and green histograms and an overall exposure graph in white. I've gone back to the menu page where this is set, turned all the histograms off but when I take a picture it's the thumbnail and the histos yet again. When I look through the viewfinder I see the normal scale across the bottom of the shot, but the view screen is black
Second, I've set the camera for some kind of exposure compensation such that if I take multiple shots of, say, my dogs, the first shot will be wildly overexposed, then properly exposed, then completely dark. For each the histos progressively march to the left.
At this point of frustration I'm considering a total reset and starting over.
Any and all suggestions welcome.

Rick

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I mounted dog crates to the chain link fence around our chicken yard to foil the feral cats and let the birds have a bit of a rest when coming to feed. We've since moved the last feral cat to the house so the birds have no competition from anyone anymore. All the locals will gladly go through the bars to get to the food on the basepan.

Rick

Just had the two Wasabi batteries and charger arrive last Saturday for my Nikon D300. Took a charge and one is in the camera right now. No difference with Nikon En-El3e which also charged on Wasabi charger. Less than $20 and has an in car charger adapter, too.

Rick

She's the epitome of all the grandkids we cannot see. 45 years since mine was that young.

Rick

I know someone who once used sandpaper to clean his windshield of ice! Nope, not me, step-kid's dad. Moron could come up with an excuse for almost everything except this.

Rick

As it happens I bought this Neewer ring flash just last week from Amazon;

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JO64MY6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I bought it with two other items that would be delivered April 15 but the light wouldn't be delivered until May 3. When the package showed up midday last Wednesday the ring light was in it, 18 days early! Woohooo Amazon! Package was perfect and so was the light. It was more money, though.
Total for light was $30.29.

Rick

I downloaded the latest version of Irfanview and low and behold it doesn't draw a blank with either NEF or DNG formats. You can work with them but you can't save in RAW format. You're stuck with jpeg.

Rick

Okay, Went out at 6:00 am with the K50 and 600mm mirror reflex lens on the tripod this morning and with the ISO set back to 400. Although I actually got the focus lamp lit once all of the shots are soft at best, muddy at worst. The DOF is so shallow the one time I got the focus lamp it only took taking my hand off the lens to make it go out. Oh well...

I'm switching to the Nikon D300. I bought a 28-300 f4.5/f6.3 and I want to try tethering to my laptop to really dial in the focus. So I've downloaded digiCamControl and i've got a cable on order, too.

Rick

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It seems my mention of the reflex lens was either too subtle or most people don't know that a reflex lens has a fixed aperture of f8 and is fully manual focus. I've seen a Sigma 1000mm lens on KEH that has the aperture fixed at f11, though, so there is room for confusion I guess.
So, to be clear, I was shooting in full manual with a Sigma 600mm mirror reflex lens on my Pentax K50 with the blown aperture solenoid. No aperture, no problem!
I may be a very inexperienced photographer but even I know that no lens is going to autofocus at a 1/2 billion (thousand million for the Brits among us) miles. :-}

Rick

Go to Hole in the Wall if you want to see what could be done. I guarantee your wife will think more of this place when she sees what can be done with a little effort and some dynamite. In the portion of the "building" used as a restaurant even the deep fry pots were cut into the sandstone!

I was all set to try and get a shot of the conjunction of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars this morning. I was hoping my 600mm reflex lens would have enough FOV to get them all in. Nope, sorry, couldn't get even one of the planets in with the moon. I shot a few pics of the moon and came inside to see if I got a keeper or two. I was shooting at ISO 1600 at 1/60 and the fixed aperture of the lens, f8. Nope, the highlights were all blown. Went back out again and started increasing the shutter speed. Came back inside, connected to the computer and started reviewing this latest group of shots. To my surprise, I didn't start getting the highlight details until I reached 1/640th. I was hoping that such a high shutter speed would kill any camera shake, and it may have, but the best shot, below, was either out of focus (I was using the distance marks on the lens as the focusing ring will go quite a bit past the distance mark for infinity) or still too much camera shake shooting hand held.
The weather forecast is for clear skies again tomorrow morning. I'll set the alarm for 5 am again and put the camera on my tripod this time and adjust the focus ever so slightly between shots and hope I can get the lens in focus this time. Once I can get the focus I'll try and get a shot of Jupiter just to see what the lens will do at a distance of 500,000,000 miles.
Like I said in the title, I learned something.

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Out walking with the little dogs yesterday mostly to experiment with White Balance settings in degrees Kelvin (how the camera got into that configuration I'm still trying to figure out). As we rounded our hedgerow I heard a bird singing at the top of its little lungs trying to attract a mate. I had the 55-200 mm lens on the D300 and got off two shots. The second was my first BIF! Woohooo!

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Just a question for the group. Could the OP use an 8 or 12 mm extension tube on the D500 to get the full fisheye effect from a lens that gives that effect on the D850?
Good luck in your quest.

Rick

There is no sense to a virus. It is completely indiscriminate in its actions. It has only one mission, to spread and kill to survive. I suggest you take the time to read Laurie Garrett's book, "The Coming Plague". It scared the beejeezus out of me when I read it 24 years ago. Perhaps if it had been required reading by politicians we wouldn't be in such a dire state now. Instead of whining I suggest you get down on your knees and thank the good Lord for your blessings. I'm sure that any of the 20,000+ dead would be more than happy to trade places with you.