I'm not familiar with the Panny cameras, but my new favorite SD card is the Scandisk Extreme Plus. Really zippy....I can't believe the increase in speed, and the price isn't bad.

Yes, you are correct if you are using one of the g lenses that no longer have an aperture ring. But for all other lenses, AI, AIS, AF D etc, all you have to do is glance at the lense. I guess it all depends on what you are used to. I have heard before the claim that Df controls slow one down, but for me it was quite the opposite.

Yes, I regularly use older non-AI lenses on my Df. The only difference is that you must use the aperture knob on the front of the camera to select the aperture when metering, then follow it by turning the actual lens aperture ring.

I will put in another vote for the Df. I have one and absolutely love it! The low light results are nothing short of amazing, and the IQ is fantastic. My reasons for buying it though might be different than yours.

I was in the photo business for 25 years. I was a commercial photographer and pro color lab owner. I was pre-disposed against digital from the very beginning due to it's certain fatal threat to my lab business. It totally closed my mind to it's possibilities. I thought surely we were going down the wrong path.

When the digital cameras came out, being of the pre-computer generation, they totally turned me off. I closed my business in 2000 due to the digital onslaught, and retired from photography. Bought an old Olympus digital point and shoot for family pics and resigned myself that it was the end of my interest in photgraphy, even as a hobby. I had absolutely no desire to learn what button does what, or where in the endless menu do I dive for whatever, in these new little black plastic computers they were now calling cameras. It totally slowed things down and took the fun out of taking pictures. It also added a frustration factor that was never there before.

That is until the Fuji X series and Nikon Df came out. Now I am firmly back in the game! As a commercial photographer, I wanted/needed to control every aspect of the photograph at a glance. Photo ops are fleeting with little time to look through a menu or try to remember which unidentified button to turn or push to do what. Now I can see at a glance the major controls of what really counts in a photo... shutter speed, apeture, and ISO. It is fast, leaves nothing to memory, and far far less frustrating...to me anyway.

I have found the size of the sensor works very much like the size of the film format back in the days of film photography. The larger the negative, the better the image quality in terms of smaller grain and far better tonal quality. The same goes, for the most part, with sensor size. The larger sensor seems to give a more complete realistic tonal range to the image. Smaller senors may have a similar dynamic range, but compared to the large sensor may look a bit "overcooked" by comparison.

I watched a presentation comparing the Nikon D800 to the Hasselblad with a digital back. Again, no comparison. The Hasselblad totally blew the D800 image out of the ball park in terms of the beauty of the tones, especially facial tones. The images just looked more relaxed and natural. Granted this was a side by side comparison, so if you aren't looking from one to the other you won't notice it as much. All things are relative.

While no digital sensor of any size seems to give the sense of realism of actual film, the larger sensors do come the closest in my estimation.

I would consider the Tokina 11-16 for your purposes. It is supposed to be, according to what I have read, one of the finest wide angle zooms for DX cameras. You really don't want to use anything wider than 14mm (21mm full frame equivilant) for interiors or you will exagerate the dimensions of the room. It will also make it easier to keep your lines straight. Prospective buyers will be dissapointed when they see the room in person if you make it look too large in your photos.

I shot architecture and interiors professionally for many years using the Hasselblad SWC/M with it's 38mm Biogon. That gave an angle of view of 90 degrees, which is the same angle as a 20 or 21mm on the 35mm format. I found that angle of view gives the most natural looking perspective to a room or building. Just my 2 cents.

Exactly!
And there-in lies the beauty! It depends if you want your "tool of the trade" to look like the precision instrument it is, or a plastic Tonka Toy...

I jest of course, but like I said in my rant last week, form follows function. It took the industry a full century to perfect that FTn of yours to the point it could get out of the way of your photographic creativity. Where is it written that perusing a list of items on a computer (albiet a little one) is the only preface to a good photograph? You might as well read the morning paper before you try to catch that fleeting moment of a bird in flight.

I guess you guys already figured out that I am from the pre-computer generation, but I think my point still holds. I realize that, if you shoot primarily one camera, you can learn which buttons to push and have it become almost second nature. But if you are a masochist like myself who shoots four completely different systems, it can be a bit more of a challenge. Everytime I pick up a different camera I have to recall which buttons do what and where to find them in the dreaded menu, or worse yet, the encyclopedia/manual! Not my idea of a fun shooting experience, sorry guys. Remember those nice, thin instruction booklets for those FTn's? My cup of tea. Computers are for desktops, and cameras in the field should be lean, mean, shooting machines. End of rant...I turn the soapbox over to you.

I would like to challenge the use of the word "retro" in regards to the Nikon Df. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Nikon never used the word retro in any of their promotional material or advertising of the Df. That term was applied by a few of the early reviewers of the camera, many of whom, I dare say, are younger photographers. I own a Df and I love it. I didn't buy it for it's looks, or it's so called retro design, I bought it for it's function. I want control over all elements of the photograph to be at my fingertips. I don't want to take my fingers or my mind off the concept of the photograph even for a minute to menu dive.

It took more than a century for the industry to perfect the design of the camera in an effort to maximize it's efficiency and usefulness to the photographer. The goal has always been to make hardware secondary to the thought process of creating the photograph. Not having to remember what anonymous button to push to check the ISO, depending on which camera you are using on any given day. I am sure you have heard the truism, form follows function, when it comes to industrial design. Perhaps the entire concept of "retro" in a negative sense is incorrect. What if the current generation of young photographers is wrong and the so called "retro" machines are actually the most efficient means with which to create a quality, technically correct photograph? The success of Fuji's X series and the early success of the Df seems to bear this out, at least to some degree. In fact who among us can say with certainty that the DSLR machines we have been calling cameras for the past 15 or 20 years are actually cameras at all? I believe Ken Rockwell refers to them as black plastic turds with computers inside. A far cry from the all metal precision machines of the film era.

Some of this mindset can be attributed to a generation of budding photographers brought up on fully auto-everything cameras. Having a technical problem? Don't worry, the camera will take care of it. They are less in tuned with the art of photography. That need to understand the laws of physics that determine why a specific amount of light (aperture) applied for a specific amount of time (shutter speed) onto a medium with a specific sensitivity to light(ISO/ASA) creates a visible image. Knowledge is power, and I applaud Nikon, Fuji, and a few other progressive companies for having the courage to put that power back into the hands of the photographer.