The whole point of a DSLR is the flexibility of changing lenses. Yes, it's wise to minimize the number of changes. Yes, create a safe environment for the change, to minimise dust and critter contamination. But it's rare that I'll go three hours without at least one change.

If a scene is worth its salt it should be attacked with as much creativity as possible. A significant fraction of that is in the lens.

Assuming the lenses have an F (Nikon) mount, you should try them on your camera before making a decision. Bring your D70 in and mount the lens. Try different apertures to make sure you don't have stuck blades, and check the results for clarity. Make sure the metering works through the lens.

Assuming this all works, $30 isn't too much to risk.

One piece of advice I got early on was to avoid blowouts unless that's an explicitly intended effect. Since your sensor can't manage the dynamic range that you're given without a blowout, you have to artificially extend it. To do that, shoot (at least) two exposures, one for the sky and one for the plane. Modify only the exposure, not the aperture, as that changes the shape of the lens and skews the resulting image.

You can merge the shots in post-processing. If you're shooting handheld, shoot as if you're doing a panoramic series; shoot the entire scene at each exposure and merge them in a program like ptgui that will export the aligned frames so you can import them as layers in Photoshop for blending. If you're shooting from tripod they should be well-aligned so you can bring them directly into Photoshop layers.

You can still salvage the image you have using a "screen" layer in Photoshop to boost the poorly exposed parts, blending that back into the original. The results are not as perfect as a multi-exposure shot but can be quite acceptable.

These techniques are not properly HDR, but allow you to extend the dynamic range of your sensor.

Me, of course. Photography is a lonely, egocentric business; if your work doesn't please you then you need a change.

Other than that, Richard Calmes, whose weightless ballerinas are high art.

I agree with an earlier respondent who said that if the body does what you need it to do, you'll get the best bang for the buck with a lens. For wildlife you can certainly improve over the zoom with a good 300 f/4. For low light landscape you might consider something like a top quality 80-200 f/2.8, which along with my 50 f/1.4 also serves for evening and night shooting. And you can really expand your reportoire with a fine 14mm like the Sigma 14 f/2.8, or 17-35 like the Tamron f/2.8-4.

If you were around a half century ago, the same wails and gnashing were heard on the advent of the Kodak Instamatic.

Yes, there are hundreds of millions of point and shoot picture takers. Come to Las Vegas someday and you'll see them, every one, lined up to take the same flashed shot of the Bellagio fountains. Not one in a hundred varies his shot in the slightest. One in ten thousand actually manipulates his camera's controls to produce a slightly above-average image.

A few thousand might be interested enough to learn how to shoot a tolerable wedding photo without blasting out the darks and lights or greening the bride. Very, very few can produce a decent portrait or compose a landscape, and hardly any will go through the rigorous cost and learning process to become effective at post-processing. Almost none will learn anything about lighting.

What will really happen is that the low-hanging fruit will be taken by carny sharks, the cheap paste-your-face-on-a-coffee-mug lot. But professional photography? Professionals are always being crowded by talented wannabes who turn pro in their turn. Keeps everyone on their game.

A professional by definition conveys two things: quality and consistency. A high-grade amateur can attain quality but not consistently. The PaS queue can do neither.

Caveat: I am not a pro.

Fidelity in the print is related only to the pixel resolution being delivered to print. 300 ppi is at the high end - I once heard that magazines print at 150 dpi - and will produce sharp images. Anything larger is wasted.

If you desire a 3"x5" print, you deliver a 900x1500 pixel image. That said, I have gotten many fine 12x18 prints from a 6mp image (3000x2000).

But if you're looking for a 24x36 print which yields no flaws when viewed from four inches, you're looking at 7200x10800, or a 78 megapixel master. I hit this number occasionally with multiframe stitched panos from my 12.6 mp camera. Processing a file that size is awkward with 8bit JPG and scales in difficulty with lossless formats.

The format of the image master makes no difference. If, though, you're extremely particular, a no-loss format like TIFF is marginally preferable to a lossy format like JPG, even with highest JPG quality selected. Due to processor and storage constraints, I rarely use TIFF.

Color fidelity is managed by taking into account your monitor profile and the profiles and technologies of the printer you're sending to.

But none of this addresses sharpness. Sharpness in the print is delivered solely by your lens and a steady hand.

("I was trying to take a picture of my daughter jumping up and down (just to try and get the motion aspect) and it kept wanting me to turn my shutter speed down, (in Manual with my aperture open as much as it would) , i would assume because it wanted more light? but then my pictures would be blurry.... I did try turning my ISO up, but i was shooting in the house, so maybe should have used the flash for the extra light... ?")

Yes, you are correct, your camera is starved for light. A flash will help but then you will have to contend with flash-induced shadow and white balance effects. Pushing ISO has its limits before you get noise and color effects. And with a wide-open shutter you have to be very careful of depth of field leaving only part (and usually the unwanted part) of your image in focus.

Try staging your adventure in a setting that is well-lit by morning or afternoon sun so that you can shoot at a relatively fast speed. In fully-manual mode set your lens aperture for at least a 24 inch DOF at the distance you will be shooting, because your subject will be in motion. Use the white balance setting that reflects the predominant light source. Manually focus at the point you want your subject to be at the top of her arc. Push ISO to a point where you can get at least 1/160th shutter speed - try for 200 or better - but be aware that some damage will occur at 800 and above.

If you get direct sun in the window, consider having her leap into the shaft of sunlight for your shot.

Depending on skin tone, your subject may shoot slightly lighter or darker than the ambient room setting, so take that into account.

Once the shot is taken, you may be able to boost the image somewhat in post processing - a half stop or more in JPG, a bit more if shooting raw. So although not optimal, it may be possible to get a nice shot out of a modestly underexposed image.

Do lots of experiments. You might try shooting a suspended stationary object first, to perfect your settings, before trying it on a moving object.

Yes, read all the free material on the Web. Save your money for some great equipment.

Every year you're going to pick up a few pointers that make orders of magnitude of change in your approach and the quality of your work. You never know where they will come from.

The best way to advance is to take your best shots and put them in front of people whose work you respect, in hope of getting a sincere negative critique. When everyone praises your work to the skies you know you're doing something wrong.

Great work takes constant practice. Find something that you can shoot as often as you like. Sunset, for instance. Image it, review the images, and try to see what you're doing wrong. Do it again the next day, and every day that you can. You'll learn to focus in on the composition and lighting that really matter. Eventually you'll be desperate for techniques that can make the result different and more pleasing to you. That's how you develop a personal style.

Study fine art. Figure out how artwork that's been treasured for centuries works. Study line, color, composition, dynamics, light and shadow, balance, texture. When you shoot, imagine how you're composing the shot to get the best qualities out of it. If you understand, for instance, how Michelangelo distorted his Pieta you'll understand how you can manipulate your images to challenge the eye.

Finally, don't be too eager to do the business. There's work, and there's life; don't confuse the two. JMHO, of course.

AF requires an f/5.6 or better lens; that's where the 1.4x pushes f/4. The 1.7x on top of the 300mm f/4 pushes it beyond that. I have used a 2x on my 300 but either go manual or put up with a lot of hunting.

I have an older 300mm, bought used, works beautifully. And I've tried the 1.4x combo on the D7000 with no problem. I don't normally use the higher multiple.

Someone mentioned a Thom Hogan review of the 300mm+1.4x - I recall a similar one that said the Tamron SP 1.4x worked just as well for a bit less money, which led me to take that route.

I have both setups. The non-VR 80-200 f/2.8 push-pull with a 1.4 works well and is still extremely sharp (I'm using the Tamron SP 1.4x and 2x) but for the size and weight I prefer the 300 f/4, which is a superb lens even with extenders - though, of course, prime. I can use either of these combos handheld with little trouble.

I have the 80-400 VR and am less than thrilled. The mass of this lens makes it unportable; image quality is not what I had hoped. I use it on occasion when nothing else works.

Every shoot is different. The last time I shot the Las Vegas works I used a manual 35mm lens and was about three miles distant. F/16 at 3 seconds, ISO 100 with a remote shutter release worked pretty well because these were rapid-fire works rather than shoot-and-bloom. Shooting wide captured the works from three casinos at once (the eerie green MGM glow is at left).

I well understand the desire to produce the darkroom product by hand, and most digital processes come up short, especially when using the limited range of jpegs.

I compensate in Photoshop by desaturating the color image (it's really the only way to assess dynamic range), and then manipulating the brightness of each of the color scales (red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, magenta). Once I have a good monochrome master I'll save that as a layer. Then go back with the original and do it again as needed for effects in different areas. Those layers all get blended together. It has the effect of manipulating lights and darks. "Screen" and "multiply" will also give gross light/dark manipulations which can be blended in, and there's always dodge and burn for emergencies.

You can get quite respectable results. Here's an example, not the best, but not the worst either. It was a multishot pano, combined and desaturated as described above.

http://www.pbase.com/fletcher_hill/image/137301735

You don't say what your focal length was so I assume you were shooting as wide as possible. Even so, you're likely to get star trails at 15 seconds without a camera drive to compensate for the motion of the earth.

Secondly, some lenses frequently don't stop at true infinity but when rotated to the stop will actually be out of focus on the far side of infinity. Verify your lens' infinity focus with something like the moon, and mark it so you can get that precise location again.

Third, f/5.6 is still pretty dark for a star sky, which I suspect is why you were pushing out to 120 seconds. At that length, any tiny vibrations will affect clarity: wind, foot traffic, the cat playing with the shutter release... Use a lens as fast as possible. F/2.8 provides marginal utility, f/1.4 is much better. That keeps ISO at a level where noise is less of a problem.

Fourth, use a remote shutter release. Cover the lens for a brief period after opening the shutter to allow the mirror to stabilize and the camera to stop shaking the tripod.

Meteor streaks are obvious: a long solid streak generally brightest in the center, and often in color as various elements burn off. Boeingeids are differentiated by a sort of dashed line across the sky in white and red.

I use the Nikkor 17-35 AFS f/2.8 for critical shooting, from landscape to documentary. Sharpness is unequalled. But for a quarter of the price, the Tamron 17-35 SP AF Di f/2.8-4 does a superb job, and I feel much more comfortable lugging it around on a hike. Both find a home on the D2Xs and D7000.