The first time I saw the Fisher Towers, I thought OMG! It's true. Wylie Coyote is real. Nothing else like the Fisher Towers. Several great You Tube videos on them.

Also, it is very battery friendly. It recharges quickly.

I bought a Neewer 750II for my Nikon D700. It is great and works extremely well with a rare miss. It has a built in slave that my on camera flash fires TTL. It does all that my Nikon 35mm flashes did and does it better with the D700. I am very pleased with it. They are about $52 on amazon or ebay new. The battery door has a plastic hinge so I am very careful opening and closing it, but no problems. It is about the same size as my SB26 Nikon flash. It swivels every which way with no release buttons to have to push.

Beautiful photos and color.
I personally don't find the petroglyphs very interesting. They all look similar as you said.
I emailed the Navajo's at Canyon DeChelley once that they should permit some of their very talented artists to put some images on the rock walls with their modern art so beautiful. In hundreds of years, they would be some of the ancients. I never got an answer. Not a lot of artwork, just some, which would be different than the petroglyphs.

A work of art to a railfan. Better than birds and flowers to us. Nice photo.

I would take my Tamron 28-300 with UV filter on Nikon D700. With digital, if you wanted a polarizer for colors and water could be used I don't use one anymore. I just take photos of what I like and don't try to create works of art. The Smokies are pretty and crowded. Avoid the weekend. The Blue Ridge Parkway is gorgeoous if sunny. Forget it if cloudy. It runs over 300 miles and not many towns on it less than 30 miles away. That whole area up east is beautful.

I bought a Neewer on amazon. It is called a ring flash but is not and calling it one is deception. It IS a

Yes, I like vivid. I have a Nikon D700. The problem I have encountered is when shooting flowers, the reds really block up and I can't correct the detail loss by desaturating the reds. It doesn't do that with other colors. I shoot jpeg, never have figured out raw with Nikon's software and don't want huge raw files anyway.

I'm a big believer in camera straps and always use one. I was shooting one day and had my Nikon F100. I was waiting for my subject and had my left hand under the body fortuntely. I was just standing there and the right strap came completely undone from the standard camera strap mounts, you know the ones that coil twice through the strap mount. I don't carry in by the strap and have no idea how it happened but it did. It just came undone. Sometimes if not using the neck strap, I will wrap the strap around my right wrist a couple of times. This could save hundreds in repairs of the lens or body. I look at those strap mounts frequently now. I made some wrist straps for my much smaller Minolta A1 camers using a dog leash with a metal clip attached to the end. I virtually never carry a camera without a strap of some sort. Wrap it around your tripod. Repairs are expensive and with my discontinued cameras may not even be available.

Nice photo. I noticed when I was there that there is only a very thin layer of dirt and vegetation on top. Below that layer is solid rock, like the rest of the planet. That's why it is such a booger to plant a tree.

I set my exposure compensation -1/3 stop. You might try it. This is for sunny and well lit scenes.

photo #4 reminds me of a slot canyon before it dried up, by the contours of the rocks.

I have a Nikon d700 FX camera that has vivid mode. Most of us like color and lots of it. The Vivid has created a problem for me when shooting red flowers. It is so vivid , that the reds block up and you can't draw the detail out in post processing in JPEG. I shoot all JPEG. Can't figure out Nikon's RAW when I load their disk so that's not an option I have figured out. I turn down the color IF I THINK OF IT when shooting flower photos with RED. Other colors don't seem to be a problem, so I turn it down from max color a notch or two.

I am a train and model railroad buff. I have taken my camera to shows but usually not. I would take my camera Nikon D700 with my walk about 99% lens Tamron 28-300 3.3x macro I think. The lighting at the shows where I go is usually in a venue large enough for good lighting. Usually I think you would take a shot of an area of the layout or the whole enchilada and close up worries and tripods are usually not necessary. If you want to get real close for a real close up or macro, then a tripod might be handy, but you can do an adequate job with your normal body and lens in my opinion. You won't need f22 or 32 except for macros with depth of field if you are experimenting for fun. My D700 has a very competent built in flash, so I wouldn't carry a flash unless your camera doesn't have one, and you probably won't need it anyway. The layouts at the shows are usually not great enough that I want photos, for they are modular to be moved around from show to show vs a layout in a home, where you would definitely want tripods, flashes etc. I hope this helps. The new cameras and their abilities should be very adequate for the show. Have fun.

Beautiful. Not another soul in the photo almost impossible, especially in the Fall.