I do understand what free estimate means, however I did not get one. While I was at the counter with my D70s the woman told me that it would cost over $200 to repair the camera. I asked her to detemine what was wrong with the camera and I would decide if I would get it repaired. What they did was hold onto the camera for 5 days and sent me a letter that it would cost over $200, which i s apparently their flat rate to repair the camera. With respect to the other D70s that I purchased on E-Bay, I purchased it before I ever drove to Nikon which is 8 minutes from my house. I own many Nikons from Nikormat, F5,D100, D1x, and on and on. Most of my equipment was purchased new. I worked in Manhattan for 34 years, so I am well aware what things cost, having dealt personally with B&H, Adorama, 47th St. camera, and Ken Hansen. I basically got the impression that Nikon has a set price to repair different camera models and that is in my opinion wrong. With respect to the value of the D70s, it is a lot less than the flat rate to repair. My belief is that they cater to Professionals and not amateur photographers which in my opinion accounts for the rather high prices

According to an article in ibtimes.co.uk

"The standards body for the microelectronics industry has found that Solid State Drives (SSD) can start to lose their data and become corrupted if they are left without power for as little as a week.

Today, consumers use several types of devices to store information – from computer hard drives, to external hard drives, to flash drives (also known as USB memory sticks or thumb drives) and SSDs.

While hard drives are mechanical in nature and make sure of rapidly rotating discs coated with magnetic material, flash storage devices are completely electronic, making use of a chip to process the data, so that data can be transferred much faster into smaller devices that are also more durable if dropped.

According to a recent presentation by Seagate's Alvin Cox, who is also chairman of the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), the period of time that data will be retained on an SSD is halved for every 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in temperature in the area where the SSD is stored.

Consumer class SSDs can store data for up to two years before the standard drops, but when it comes to SSDs used by enterprises, the drives are only expected to retain data for a period of three months – a fact confirmed by Samsung, Seagate and Intel's own ratings on their products.

Security firm KoreLogic is concerned that far too many people are now using SSDs in both consumer and enterprise applications, which is clearly not a great idea if the data is important and might be needed for a longer period that three months.

The firm advises that users make sure to regularly back up their data and create drive images, or they will risk losing their data, which can have disastrous consequences, for example if the data was part of evidence gather by a law firm for a deposition.

"If long term storage is required, image the SSD onto a mechanical drive and place that drive in storage as well as the SSD," KoreLogic writes in a blog post.

"If you maintain an online legal hold storage capability, image the SSD to that storage. Either way, you essentially eliminate potential data retention problems. The worst-case scenario is explaining to the court why your data cannot be accessed because the hard drive you placed into storage is throwing out errors."

This is the first i've heard of this issue but worth considering when thinking about long term storage of image files. Which is why I posted this article. I think as photographers we tend to have large numbers of unique files that are irreplaceable.

Hi,
I use a Nikon D5200 camera.
I went to see the Victory in Europe (VE Day) in Washington DC on May 8th to photograph the historic flyover by all of the U.S. planes that took part in the war. The show was terrific and I got many still photos of good quality. I was not able to take video, however, because I couldn't use TTL sighting. It was impossible, in the sun's glare, to find the airplanes and follow them on the movable video screen. I was so disappointed to have missed the video of a once in a lifetime flyover. It looks as though video on the Nikon 5200 is meant for inside or just around your house, providing it is not too sunny to see the screen. Do I need a dedicated video camera in addition to my Nikon 5200, and if so, which ones are recommended? Have any other digital camera makers solved this video problem? Thank you for your help.

SSD is Solid State Drive. It stores info by changing the configuration of the electrons/molecules within. Don't ask me how! I guess there is a possibility of slowly losing that configuration by reverting to the original state. On the other hand HD (Hard Drives) change the magnetic orientation of little bits of iron on glass platters. They can change their orientation only if an external magnetic force is applied.

I am, however, always suspicious When the makers of one type of technology attacks another type. It's the money, stupid!

Thanks for the reply.

I probably wasn't clear. I can find and extract the exif data from a single image. I can extract this information for all of the files in a given directory, but to a DOS txt file. After some manipulation (programming a Delphi app) I can then generate a grid listing all of the info on all of the files. Finally I can export this to an Excel file.

What I am looking for is a program that will do this all in one step: Chose a set of files or a directory and have the program generate directly the Excel file.

Thanks again.