B&H is own and run by observant orthodox Jews. It is closed to observe the Sabbath from sunset friday to sunset Saturday. There website will not even tak orders during this period of time.

no, my two pieces of caryon wre my camera bag and my tripod! they have baggage insurance limits that are ridiculously low!

If you stay in Ashville, there is this great early 200'th century Hotel, the Grovepark inn (https://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/asheville-grove-park), first oppened in 1913 with lots of 21st century amineties. It has a back veranda where you can see 70 miles across range after range of that appalachian mountains with the farthest range being the Great Smokey Mountains. It ain't cheap with peak season rates being in the mid $300 per night. I have just spent the day there and acted like a guest and spent my night in cheaper accommodations.

Take the short detore off of the Parkway to Mt Mitchell just North of Asheville. There are some great views from there1

When I first went raw, with Adobe Lightroom, I shot so that I got both a RAW and JPG image of of each photograph. I would look for JPEG images that other than crop, where very close to what I wanted then use my Lightroom tools on the raw version of the image and try to match the JPG version. I did this over and over again until the basic tools adjustment were second nature to me. I then went through all the fine adjustment tools and worked on learning them one by one using Adobes tutorial videos as well as any number of free video professional and amature videos that are posted on youtube until I was proficient with those. T%here are hundreds of tools in Photoshop, and unfortunately and Inexplicably Adobe does not have a nice searchable help file that explains the basics of what each tool does. Instead it has a hideous online help file with a so called "Smart Search" that, to me gives the information for all sorts of Adobe products with similar features as well as photoshop and the answer I'm looking for is in the 45th answer down. It is very difficult to use especially if you can describe what you want to do and can't remember, or don't know the name of the tool or it requires the use of multiple tools in a certain order.

I replaced my UV filters with top graded circular polarized filters. It slows the shooting process down a little but I never see lens flair anymore.

For you women out there, please note that both Joby and BlackRapid both make over the shoulder straps that are curved so that the front side of the strap goes down the center of the chest that will make carrying a heavy cameras much more comfortable for women.

Pick a very clear night right after a cold front has moved through. Set your Camera to spot metering. Make certain the moon is in the center of the view finder. Use tripod if you don't have steady hands. Also if you have a daytime moon that is overhead 2 hours before sunset on a very clear day you can get a moon shot with a midnight blue background.

I like computer games also and the 970 has over 3 times as many CUDA cores and twice the video memory as the k1200. . . Also I'm a big fan of MSI motherboards, they are built with the highest quality parts and I have never had one fail* on me and I always by graphic cards made by MSI . . . that way I avoid finger pointing if anything does go wrong and MSI does not manufacture Quadro Graphic cards.

*I ran a 3.4GHz 1& 2600K overclocked to 4.4GHZ 24/7 for over 5 years without a component failure on its MSI motherboard.

I do like to Game also. . . but having an HDR merge of three 21 mega-pixel raw full-frame images happening in way less than a minute is really nice.

It's the Monitor! Most laptops do NOT have an IPS Monitor and you should connect them to a calibrated IPS Monitor for final color ajustments. If you do not have a quality IPS monitor that is properly calibrated you will never get your colors right except by accident. See Arnaud Frich's excellent article on photographic color management:

http://www.color-management-guide.com/how-to-choose-monitor-for-photography.html

For a fairly current list of IPS monitors see:

http://www.144hzmonitors.com/best-photo-editing-monitor-2016/

Lots of CPU and GPU speed and lots of GPU and main system memory make the editing process go much faster and smoother: If you are a Windows 10 user please note Gaming Desktops and Gaming Laptops have plenty of this stuff. Note most photo editing software does not support multiple video cards so if you go the gaming desktop route invest in the best single video card with lots of memory not multiple video cards. And turn on the "Use Graphic Processor" feature as GPU's are designed to more rapidly process graphics than any CPU of the same generation. Also make certain you have something that allows your camera to transfer graphic images to your the computer. If your camera is fairly new it will most likely have WIFI. If not you will need a card reader that supports the same memory card as your camera uses. If you get a 4K monitor make certain the video output of your computer or laptop supports 4k.

If you are an Apple person all the same applies but make certain that you get the Apple Computer you get and the monitor you get can be connected. Many Monitors have "Apple" versions or are "Apple compatible". Also be very careful that the particular Apple computer or laptop you get even has a way to connect to an external monitor. Apple does not feel the least bit obligated to conform to any PC industry standard or to not completely change their interfaces when a new model comes out. Check your specifications carefully.

Note laptop touch pads are terrible when using photo editing software, a high quality mouse is a little better but do not come close to a Wacom graphics tablet. (You don't need the $800 one unless you have really great drawing skills. they have models under $100 that will fill most photographer's needs.)

LAST BUT NOT LEAST --- SHOOT RAW! and use or learn Lightroom/ or On1's raw editor due out in a few weeks that allow you do non-destructively edit raw files. You loose too much detail when you have your camera convert your photos to JPEG.

My System is Home Built.
MSI Gaming Motherboard-- gaming motherboards are made with the best components since gamers like to overclock there systems.
Intel I-7 processor
32 GB RAM
NVidia 970 GPU
2 500GB SSD's For software and OS (Windows 10)
2 3GB server grade spinning drive in level 1 raid all my photos are stored here
Carbonite off-sight backup of all digital photos
Logitech gaming mouse and a Wacom tablet
Dell U2413 IPS Monitor
Syder Elite color calibration system
Lightroom/Photoshop and On1 Raw on preorder

Hope this of help.

Bob Benson
http://www.bug-bird.com/