Hello TinyEric and welcome to the Nikonites Community. Lots of good folks here willing to talk about their nikons and their experience taking pictures. Buying a camera is really a personal thing. Each of the two cameras you are looking at are good choices but each will have features that the other one does not. One has more mega pixels, the other one has bracketing the other does not, one has bulb exposure the other does not, so it's a matter of which has the features that fit your style of photography. I would sit down and list all the features of each and then make a list of the features you want and then make a comparison which one meets your needs best. And as Jack says there is nothing like picking one of them up and see which one feels best.