[steveti]

Hello to all. I found this website after doing some browsing looking for advice on Digital Photography.

My original intention was to pick up on a dropped hobby from my early/mid teens and look for a decent 35mm film camera to replace my extremely aged an now faulty Canon AE1. When I started looking around I soon found that my choice of camera was becoming ever limited. So, although I've dabbled with a couple of point and shoot compacts and a Finepix S602 Z, I decided my best course of action might be to consider a D-SLR.

So, here we are, I've have just bought a Nikon 40DX and am very happy with its feel, picture quality etc. I also want to dig deeper into the nuts and bolts of digital photography, I'm presently trialing Adobe Photoshop elements (30 days free from adobe) and am begining to get to grips with its very basic functions. It's like being back at college learning to use Auto Cad. Looking for some advice on the best software package to use, elements looks ok so far but I cannot seem to use it for images captured using the cameras' RAW format. I understand that RAW uses the cameras' image capture to its best ability.

I'll be wanting to use the camera for general landscape, portraits of my two beautiful daughters and occasional motorsport (F1 when funds allow).

Any help, advice etc would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Steve.