No, I was a fan / follower of Fred Picker from the mid to late 70's till he sold Zone VI studios to Calumet and stopped publishing his newsletters. I attended a couple of his workshops. Some people say he had a mean temper but I never saw it. I thought he was a likable guy. Very knowledgeable.

I will often go out with my large-format 4X5 / 5X7 camera "cruisin' fer snaps" (as the photographer Fred Picker used to say). I'll make a day of it and drive around till I see something I'd like to photograph. I'll usually take my digital SLR along with me, too. Sometimes I'll see something that lends itself to being photographed with both, sometimes just with the view camera.

I've been doing large-format photography with a 4X5 / 5X7 view camera for over 40 years. That may modify the results a little. ;-)

On my digital camera, I have two I really like. One is a Nikon 18-140 mm f/4.5 lens with vibration reduction. The other is an older Nikon 35-70 mm f/2.8 "D" series lens.

On my view camera, I have a Wollensak Rapax 7.5 inch convertible lens that is amazingly sharp. It's much better than the more modern Schneider Symmar-S 210 mm lens I also have.

I would suggest removing the hard drive and looking at it as a secondary drive on another computer. That will not do any additional damage unless it was a virus that did it. There are programs of varying costs and capabilities that can look for files that are "deleted." Nothing is ever completely deleted. In the old days, files that were "erased" were simply renamed with a ? replacing the very first character in the file name. Not sure how later versions of Windows do it, but they have to be there even if Windows is designed not to recognize them.

The D750 has a DX mode; you can use the lenses you have in this mode but you will have a loss of megapixels (I've seen it noted as 10 megapixels in DX mode for this camera). If you're not just buying a D750 camera body, I'd guess you will have at least one FX lens to work with.

A couple of "tech" points -

Shutter speed determines how a photo of moving things, like flowing water, will be viewed. A shutter speed in the range of 1/25 to 1/50 second will render the image close to what the mind actually perceives; hence, it's the most realistic. Faster shutter speeds "freeze" the motion and make the water appear frozen. Slower shutter speeds give the misty, foggy, dreamy appearance to moving water. Use whichever you wish for the effect you want to create.

Also, if you plan on mounting a lot of prints, a dry mount press and tacking iron are great tools to have and well worth the investment. I mount all my own prints.

Georgia O'Keeffe referred to those time periods as "the far theatricals of the day." :-)

I still have and use large-format cameras for fine-art photography. Nothing digital there. I have to know how to frame and adjust the camera, how to determine exposure, how to process and print the photos in a real darkroom. There is a lot to be known about composition and a lot of it is not on the internet. Fred Picker taught me a good deal of what I know and about the only place you will find it is in his quarterly newsletters, which are hard to find. His family or estate wishes that these newsletters NOT be scanned and published on internet.

I used to frequent Freestyle Photo in Los Angeles. They were a tinkerer's paradise way back when. They have changed but I still like them!

Wait till you become a contester! :-)

Amateur radio can be an expensive hobby. A friend of mine spent upwards of half a million dollars on a station. He has 13 towers!

I am a band photographer. It seems that having a totally black background in a photo is highly prized among some band photographers, so much so that some will Photoshop the background they get in the shot out of the photo to make it completely black. Although I like the look of the black background, I won't go to the extent of altering a photo to make it so.

I don't own any of those lenses for my DSLR but I own two view cameras. I use the swing, tilt and shift features constantly on those. I do mostly landscape and nature photography and a little architectural photography with the view camera. I consider those features a must for architectural photography.

I photograph a little of everything but mainly I am a band photographer. Lighting varies widely and wildly in the venues where I take photos. Occasionally, Auto does give me the best photos. But mostly I use Priority or Manual mode and sometimes, depending on the lens I am using, Aperture or Shutter priority. The thing is, if you make Raw files of your images, your exposure can be quite a bit off and you can still process the photo to have something acceptable.