RAW files are really the way to go, you can always convert them to Jpeg or TIFF but with RAW you basically get the original sensor data so you can correct for a number of issues. Given the cheap price for memory cards and hard drive storage today file size shouldn't be much of an issue. I imagine your camera also came with photo stitching software which nearly automatically stitches a number of frames together for very high resolution landscapes. There are some good quality and fairly inexpensive places online to print very large images in case you decide to wall paper your room with images of some of your nicely restored gear
A quick hint for low light shooting in natural light: if you slightly over expose when using the highest sensitivity settings and save as RAW files you can generally end up with less noise in your final processing.
I haven't used Nikon since I had their gear in the 70's but their glass is generally first rate. They fell behind a bit early in the digital era due to the financial drain from their parent company Mitsubishi Heavy but have now caught up again. Enjoy the camera and your first samples look very good, great choice!
Digital photography has come a long way in a very short time. I bought my first digital just before going to Cuba in 1999. To test the waters and avoid having to bring my bag of camera gear along I bought a little point and shoot with a grand total of 3 megapixels that cost around $1,200 bucks without batteries or memory card. The images were OK but the speed was horrible; about 35 seconds to "boot up", close to 1 second shutter lag, and worst of all you could shoot one image but then had to wait about 10 seconds for transfer to memory card before you could capture a second image. That thing almost ended up in Havana bay due to my frustration! I rarely use the 10 FPS capability of my current camera but I sure wish I had that 10 years ago-I missed a lot of great images from my time in Cuba.
Rodger WQ9E
