I just got mine in the mail yesterday. Fantastic lens, I like it better than the Tamron version. Woops, I thought it was April 1st, Sorry. Merry Christmas!!

I just got a D7100. One of the few knocks about this camera is the small buffer size if you are doing continuous shooting. You can help this with a fast SD Card because it will write to your camera faster (emptying the buffer). I bought an ultrafast 32 Gig Sanyo model (95 Mbps read speed) but from what I understand this is overkill. I tend to overdo things and it was not very expensive so what the heck!!

I have the D7100 which will be put to use starting tomorrow. Next to it under the tree is a 35 mm 1.8 Nikor lens. I researched this a lot here on the Hogs and also on Nikonites. You just can't get a better DX lens for the price (under $200 on B&H and Adorama). f/1.8 should do the job in low light with the D7100.

I always shot JPEG until I started using Lightroom. Now I shoot only RAW because post-processing JPEG's is limited as compared to RAW.

Between here, Digital Photography School, and Nikonites I get every thing I need to know.

I'm Jealous!! My new D7100 is still under the tree along with David Busch's book on how to use it. I wanted the 7100 for the commander function, Auto FP for flash with shutter speeds > 1/250, and FV lock to help with blinkers.

I recently bought a 10 stop ND filter after reading the following "step by step" from Digital Photography School. It spells out how to do this in very easy fashion.
http://digital-photography-school.com/step-by-step-guide-to-long-exposure-photography/

A number of years ago, I had a computer crash. I replaced the computer and tried to get all my photos back from an external hard drive. Yes you guessed it, the external hard drive failed!!

I took the hard drive to a couple of computer places and they wanted a ridiculous amount of money (thousands) to see if they could get the photos back with no guarantees. I decided the photos were not worth it.

Here is where it gets interesting. Someone told me to put my hard drive in the freezer and try it. I did this and it didn't work. I put it back in the freezer and forgot about it. About a year later I ran across it in the back of the freezer and plugged it in!! All files were visible and I down loaded them pronto!

Now I use 3 places to back up, 2 externals and main hard drive. I still have everything in one place though so I still could loss everything.

This is tension on steroids!!!! I want to jump in there with lightroom and use my ruler function!!

Wow, Good to hear that. My d7100 is under the Christmas tree waiting to be opened (along with David Busch's two books). I know for a fact that I will have the camera and lens AF functions in opposition many times so I am glad to hear I won't blow up my new camera!!!

Welcome to the Hogs Bud!! I did the same, I was a member for months before I posted anything!! Also, some of us have jobs and can't watch UHH all day long to respond to a thread!!

Others on the Hogs have been using it without a tripod. At 4 something pounds, i would imagine it would get heavy after a while. The pictures I have seen have been pretty crisp when hand held!!

Nice!!!! Can't wait to see the pictures. My next purchase will be this lens or the Tamron equivalent. Is this the sport or C version??? Is the C version out yet???

Adorama and B&H have the 50 mm f/1.8 Nikor lens at $104.95 currently. This lens will give you very pleasing Bokeh when you open it wide.

When I was driving through the mountains in Colorado and my wife didn't want to pull over every 30 secs for me to get out and get a photograph, I put a circular polarizer filter on and I got some great shots through the car windshield

I am a math science left brained person and I don't get the Art end of things sometimes. I can appreciate good Art when I see it but sometimes I have to scratch my head. For example, I recently went to an Art Museum and they had a huge canvas on a wall painted completely white with a ping pong ball sized red dot in it. That was it!!!! People were raving about this piece of "Art"!! I would really love to hear what some of the masters would say about it!! Ultimately, the artist who did this had a name for himself so he can do anything he likes and people will pay. Maybe that is what is going on with this photographer.