The last I heard was that Nikon sends representatives to make sure the production of their products meet Nikon specs. They have a reputation to protect so that the production is closely watched. Yes, labor in Japan is expensive the average salary in Japan is about 150% of the US and housing is out of sight hence typically three generations live in a house. I lived there for 7 years and soon realized that I could not purchase a camera there because there were too many middlemen in Japan. Although I lived there, I ordered my camera and equipment from New York and received them in Japan for considerably less that purchasing in Japan.

You hit the nail right on the head of the problem in Japan with the cost of living. Having lived there for seven years I am very familiar with it. The people who get the greatest shock are those who come from Brazil because they see the high wages on the internet and plan to work in the automotive industry, 35,000 in both Toyota and Hamamatsu. The problem for them shows up because they don't look at the cost of living and many of them have a hard time every returning home because of your suggestion about the cost of living.

The second challenge is that because of the fact that Japan discriminates against so many things not Japanese and so those who come from other countries never get promoted and work as grunts the whole time they are there. All the supervisor jobs are of course held by Japanese.

I am wondering if your fire resistant safe is like mine? The way that they keep the temperature down during the fire is to evaporate water inside the safe which would require you to make sure that your stored hard disk is in a sealed container so that the humidity would not effect it. Just wondering.

Me too, all kinds of flowers.

There are many video presentations on photography which suggest settings and ways to look at your pictures critically. The newer cameras have so many options which the videos suggest how to use them and which are most important. Some time you will catch a chance for a photo that will never return which of course means being ready to just do a snap shot at the time. You may even catch something like this. Wished I would have been available to catch this. I was old enough but had no camera.

The comments about the manufacturers of batteries selling many different named batteries really fits the industry. I visited a friend of mine who worked in a factory that made automotive type batteries and was interested to see that coming off the same line were almost every battery brand that I had ever seen. Just different labels but the same battery. Probably sold at very different prices too.

What a beautiful duck. Great picture, thanks for sharing.

It sounds like you would like a new camera to me. With all the new features and capabilities that are available you would soon learn that you would be using some of them and enjoying even more your amateur status. I never thought that I would want to do video on my camera until I purchased one and have found that it is a great option. If the cost of the new one you have probably already looked at is not a deal breaker why not?

We are sort of partial in our family to girls. We have 7 children and they are all boys except 6, then add 11 grand daughters.

That sounds like the B&H that I know.

She greatly out shines the flowers.

I have been using Open Office exclusively for many years after using both Microsoft Office and Open Office. There is nothing Microsoft office can do that Open Office can't do just as well. The price is the final reason for me since Open Office can do anything Microsoft Office can do. I was involved in computer support for several years and recommend it to everyone

Any DX lens that I have seen actually says DX on it. Each of the lenses that I have say nothing FX or DX but they are all FX lenses.

It is not like this all the time. Just in the winter. The rest of the time it hot and humid.

A single payer system run by the government was what Obama was after in the first place. They knew the "system" would fail and the feds would have to take it over. Why are we surprised when the web site that we paid millions for did not work?