I have not had a family wedding in which the Pro said 'no' other cameras. I have had a family wedding in which, due to the B & G's failure to communicate, many pictures the family would have wanted taken were not taken by the Pro (he didn't know he had to) and my camera saved the day since I know one side of the family well and the other somewhat.

The B & G have to give the Pro a list of all the family members that they want photos of (in addition to those taken at the church). I'm referring to photos at the reception and other candids. This is particularly important with elderly family members who might not be with us too much longer, seldom go out, seldom dress up, and are very likely to leave the event early (so if left for the last minute, they won't be there.)

I have made it a point to photograph them myself because at one niece's wedding only one photo of the groom's grandfather was taken by the Pro--and that wasn't particularly good and he was in the second row as part of a group. This wedding was the last time he went anywhere and he died shortly thereafter. If the Pro comes around to the table later and takes more photos, great, but while he's busy elsewhere I cover the 'grands' and 'great grands' before they leave or start looking too tired.

So tell the B & G to communicate CLEARLY as to who they want photos of and to be sure to get the older folks covered early on before they leave.

Another thing that Pro's haven't taken photos of and my nieces or cousins would have wished he had are: 1) the cake table before the cutting with closeups of the cake; 2) the table decorations, center pieces/flower arrangements; 3) the venue before it's full of people. I often sneak in and take those but, again, I've never dealt with a strict contract, I'm just afraid my flash might fire a 'slave' flash (Pro's usually work in teams) or throw off their lighting. If the contract is that strict, have them put those on the list as well, then you can relax.

Before you order, and if you're going to be using Photoshop, go to the Adobe site and check which video cards are supported.

Regardless of the scanner you use, the problem you're going to come across is the textured paper they used back then. It creates a dot pattern all over the image and trying to get rid of it softens the image.

There are some internet post that suggest ways of minimizing the pattern, but I didn't find any of the ones I tried particularly helpful.

My scanner of choice is the Epson line because I like their TWAIN software. But neither that nor PS resolves the textured paper problem.

Mostly, it depends on the subject of the image. Most of my photos are of artwork since my husband is an artist. Those need to be tack sharp. If the subject matter is architecture, landscape, city scape, or other sharp-edged subjects, sharpness is also required. If photographing nature, the degree of sharpness desired is subjective. If photographing people, much less sharpness is desirable—and the older the subject the less desirable it is. Sharpening is my last step before sending it to the printer. The files on my computer are not sharpened.

I usually use unsharp mask simply because I got used to using that twenty some years ago and, by the time smart sharpen came along I was set in my ways. Ditto for LR and ACR. I tend to use ACR (although it’s practically the same) because I like to save files my way not LR’s way.

In ACR: I use only screen sharpening. I reduce noise before sharpening.

In PS I have several actions written for different images. All create a new layer with a mask and change the blend mode of the sharpening layer to luminosity at the end. The numbers refer to sliders in unsharp mask: amount, radius, and threshold.

Standard sharpening, for most good images that don’t require hand-tweaking. 100-03-02

Less than above, just a touch of sharpening: 70-2.5-04 (often my choice for people photos)

LAB Sharpen: for images in which accurate color is necessary and I’m not happy with the capture. Convert to LAB, 80-2-6 on the lightness channel and switch back to RGB

Clarity Sharpening: left over from before Photoshop let you use camera raw as a filter: 35-35-8. It still comes in handy occasionally. If I want more sharpening, I run this one then I run the second one listed above. They sometimes make a good combo.

Reverse sharpening strong: This is what I used before the dehaze filter was invented for images that were hazy or foggy: 30-60-0. Still comes in handy sometimes

Reverse sharpening, milder: 20-30-0

No halos sharpening: not really sharpening, just a slight contrast boost, but it makes images look sharper. You can repeat it over and over till happy. 15-15-0

And, of course, High Pass Sharpening

The only books I get on Kindle are novels and other "word only" books. Anything with illustrations or photos I get hard copy. Books like camera manuals I have a hard copy and a Kindle copy for when I travel.

I like flipping pages (hard to do on Kindle); I like being able to see captions under the picture (without formatting errors); I like to take in the whole photo in its original size (also not likely on Kindle).

If you have a non-color Kindle version, it's a no brainer./

Both have advantages.

Generally, DX will be sharper, more detailed out of the camera, but noisier. When you remove the noise, the image gets softer.

FX handles noise in the shadows and midpoints a lot better allowing you to shoot successfully under more conditions.

If you can afford FX, that would be my choice--especially if you already have lenses that are compatible with the camera you choose.

Note, however, that the D600 and D800 families (which I would love to have) are very high mega pixel cameras. You have to be sure that your computer has the processing power and the storage for these large files. When you go above 12-16 MP (which is really the optimal range for most users, although I've found 10MP sufficient) storage becomes a problem.

If you decide to go with the D610 (which I'm dying to do), check the return policy of the dealer you buy from. Although less than with the D600, the D610 still has oil spot problems on the sensor and some people need to return them for replacement. It seems to be a manufacturing flaw having to do with the shutter release mechanism.

If you wet clean the sensor yourself, that voids your guarantee.

I'm in a similar position. Not only am I ready for a new camera, but I'd like to move to a full-frame dslr to reduce the noise in shadow areas.

I've been watching the forums for months on the d600 and d610. As you probably know, the d600 was plagued by oil spots in the sensors and owners were furious with Nikon for their response or lack thereof. The general consensus was that, when the shutter was activated, oil splattered on the sensor. This was not something you could fix with a blower and required wet cleaning (which voids your guarantee unless you send it to Nikon to do).

It was assumed that the d610 was their way of correcting the problem without actually acknowledging that there was one.

As it turned out, there is still some "oil on sensor" problem with the d610. It isn't as wide-spread and it seems to disappear after 5,000 shutter actuations, but it's still there.

If you can't postpone the purchase any longer (like I can), my recommendation would be to buy from a dealer who has a liberal return/exchange policy. Amazon has been extremely generous to their customers with the d600 problems. You might want to read the review sections at amazon for the two cameras to get an idea of what I mean.

I have only two grandchildren and taking one photo in which they both look good is a battle. These are ideas that have helped me:

1. Pose them where they are comfortable.
2. Use a tripod and take all the photos (or at least a big series of photos) from that one position. This will make it easier to post-process if you need to exchange the head from one picture to another since they will be the same size.
3. Set your camera to shoot 3 photos with each shutter activation (no need to bracket exposures, just shoot in bursts of 3).
4. Good old fashioned bribery. I can't bribe the baby, but my 5 year old grandson is definitely willing. I have his piggy bank next to me and, each time he doesn't make a silly face or paste on an artificial smile, I drop a quarter into the piggy bank. This way, I focus on the baby and press when she looks good.

I tried to work on it a little and did manage to rescue some detail. I'm new to the forum and didn't realize that rules prohibit posting edited versions without permission. In order to make the suggestions, I needed to edit, but I won't keep a copy of your image after posting.

This is what I suggest: I used Photoshop CC, Perfect Resize 7.5, and a couple of Topaz plug ins. I'll run you through what I did in the hope that you can duplicate it or follow the general strategy in whatever program(s) you have:

1. I resized the image using Perfect Resize 7.5 so the resolution would be 300 and the vertical dimension would be 5 inches. This gave me something to work on. If you can rescan your photo, make sure you get it at a much higher resolution.
2. I loosely lassoed and feathered the lady's face and put it on its own layer.
3. Making the face fill as much monitor space as possible, I tried to rubber stamp away some of the spots on her cheeks, etc. using the rubber stamp on lighten mode and working at 20% opacity or less.
4. I ran a levels adjustment layer lightening her face somewhat and clipped it to the layer with the face selection.
5. I created a new empty layer, filled it w/50% gray in soft light mode, and using the brush tool at 20% and white to lighten and black to darken, I worked on areas of the face (and the photo in general) that needed either lightening, darkening, or defining. SPECIFICALLY her eyes, mouth, etc. I also worked on his face and his left pant leg and trying to define his left foot. (This technique is known as "painting with light." and is very handy).
6. I made a composite layer on the top of the stack and ran it through Topaz de noise (which softened it a little) and also through Topaz Detail to recover some detail. (I didn't note the settings, but I went pretty softly on this because it was recovering undesirable details). If you don't have Topaz denoise, use the PS "reduce noise filter."
7. Another composite layer and ran the Shadows and highlight filter on it to taste.
7. I duplicated this composite layer and I ran the high pass filter on it (which changes it to gray) and changed the mode to soft light. I was pretty conservative on the radius. I just concentrated on her face. I added a mask to the high pass layer, filled it with black and just allowed her face to get the effects of the filter by painting it in the mask using white. I then duplicated the high pass layer and reduced the opacity of the second instance to less than 50% (it needed a little more, but not too much).
8. A blank layer on top, sampled the color from a good point on her face and painted at 10% opacity over her face to even out tones (especially the blown out part of her forehead) as well as giving a little definition to cheekbones, etc. and anything I'd missed before. I then blurred the strokes using gaussian blur. This step was pretty helpful. I probably should have done it earlier in the process and saved myself some work.

I was able to recover her eyes (they are open and looking at something to her right below eye level which is why her head is tilted forward). Her nose is a bit indistinct, but it's there. Her eye brows are gone and I didn't try to guess what they are like, but if you know, you can "restore" them in step 5. Her mouth is a little vague. She appears to be biting down on her lower lip so only the top lip shows. I assumed that her skin tone is darker than it appears in your scan but lighter than his.

You are correct in that, if you shoot RAW, post processing is necessary and if you shoot jpeg you can print or post the image right away.

"Photo quality" is something that depends in large part on the photographer and, even the best photographer sometimes has to shoot under less than perfect conditions, which is where RAW comes in very handy. Even in shots that come out OK, RAW allows you to take it way beyond OK to pretty darn good. The difference shows in print and on screen.

To me, the issue is: how important is the image to you?

When you shoot RAW you always have the option of deleting the RAW file later if you don't want it but IF it's a photo that you will want to keep--something meaningful like a new baby, a wedding, a graduation, etc.--wouldn't you want to have the best possible keepsake?

Even if you don't know how or care to process it now, save the RAW to process it later. You can regain detail in shadows and highlights; reduce noise; change your exposure; change your white point; sharpen the image--and this is just on the first screen of ACR.

I shoot RAW always. My camera setting has the option of exposing a RAW and a jpeg at the same time. (I assume all do). If the jpeg is fine, I may use it, but if it isn't I go to the RAW and salvage the moment.

I like to have the option, and I regret all the years that I didn't shoot RAW.