Les Jones

New Nikon cameras and lenses

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |

D3000, D300s, and updates to the 18-200mm and 70-200mm/F2.8. Amazon already has them up.

DP Review has a brief D3000 hands on with full specs. Hit the next and prev buttons for other new Nikon gear. Somewhere on DP Review there’s a side-by-side chart comparing the D60, D3000 and D5000, but I can’t find it again.

What I wanted was a camera the size of a D40/D60 with the 12MP high ISO sensor of the D90/D5000. The size is right, and the D3000 has the improved autofocus system of the D5000, along with a larger LCD (but with the same 230,000 pixels).

The big disappointment is that the D3000 has the D60’s 10.7MP sensor. I don’t care about the 1.3 extra megapixels, but what I lusted after was the amazing high ISO performance of the 12MP sensor and this camera doesn’t have it. That pretty much does it for me, but just to pile on, the D3000 lacks the built-in chromatic aberration correction and distortion correction of the D5000 and D90. Also missing from the D5000: LiveView, movie mode, and exposure bracketing.

None of this makes the D3000 a bad camera, but it does make it a half-hearted upgrade from the D40 and a pointless upgrade from the D60. If you’re starting from scratch this looks like a decent camera at a fair price, but be aware the feature set here is getting a bit out of date. (Almost every new DSLR these days has LiveView, for instance.) It definitely ain’t the swingin’ deal the D40 was three years ago. Me, I’ll keep plugging away with the D40 until there’s something clearly better at a price I’m willing to pay.

P.S. It’s still a few days until August 4th, but compare today’s introduction to the (supposedly) leaked Nikon roadmap.

Tags: d40, d5000, d60, d90, nikon

Nikon 2009-10 roadmap leaked

Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

This is unconfirmed, but looks plausible. Here’s the 2009 roadmap:

August 4 introduction: (Apparently the end of July presentation is for compact cameras)

• Nikon D3000
• Nikon D300s with Full-HD movie 24 fps, improved AF, self timer + mirror-up, cf + sd-slot
• AF-S DX 17-65/3.2-4 G VR with 72(!) mm filter

October 15 presentation:

• Nikon D700x with 24.5 MP, Full-HD movie 24 fps, improved AF and self timer + mirror-up
• AF-S Nikkor 24-135mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR (The FX-dream-walk-around-lens?)
• AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II (What everybody waited for! 82 mm filter, 1530 g)
• AF-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.4G
• AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G (No VR?)

Tags: nikon

Happy July 4th

Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | East Tennessee, Holidays | Permalink | 1 Comment |

We caught the Gatlinburg fireworks show. Good stuff. After watching it for a little while we went back to our room and realized we had a good view from the porch.

This time we stayed at the Best Western Twin Islands hotel. The river wraps around and weaves through the hotel grounds, so most of the rooms are on the water. We see ducks wandering the grounds all the time. There’s a central courtyard with a pool and kids playground that’s nicely removed from the road. This is our new favorite place to stay. The price was reasonable - $150/night for a suite with a fireplace and jacuzzi on a holiday weekend. We took a look at some of other rooms and some are nicer than others, so it pays to scout a room ahead of time if you can. Note to self: we were in 402 and a maid told us that 417 was a nice room.

I usually like Gatlinburg in the fall when the leaves are changing, the temperatures are just right, and there are apples to be had in Cosby. Now I like it for July 4th, too, even if it’s a little warm today. There’s the parade at midnight, July 3rd and fireworks on the 4th. We’ll be doing this again.

P.S. Both of those pictures were taken with the new Nikon 35mm F1.8 AF-S lens.

Tags: nikon

LensRental.com’s lens repair results

Monday, June 22nd, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Via Nikon D40 Photographer comes LensRental.com’s annual lens repair survey. The Nikon they have the most problems with is the 18-200mm superzoom. That’s consistent with other reports I’ve read that it’s Nikon’s most-repaired lens, with lots of motor problems.

I noticed there’s not a single Nikon prime lens on the list. Now maybe Lensrental.com just doesn’t rent them (or rent enough to make their “9 or more” cutoff), but somehow I doubt that. I think they just don’t need repairs very often (in contrast, there are a number of Canon primes on the list). Meanwhile it’s disappointing that the expensive Nikon 70-200mm 2.8 VR and 17-55mm 2.8 are on the list.

The two most-repaired lenses are the Sigma 120-300 f2.8 and 18-200 OS. And there’s this: “The Sigma 120-400 and 150-500 are no longer on the list because we no longer carry them. Both had failure rates of about 45% while we had them. New batches may be better (ours were all bought early), we don’t know.” That’s too bad - the Sigma 150-500mm was one of the cheapest paths to 500mm reach.

Tags: nikon

Nikon 35mm/F1.8 AF-S lenses arriving at Amazon

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

I’ve had one of these on back order since May and today I got an order update:

We now have delivery date(s) for the order you placed on May 21 2009 (Order# XXXXXXXXXXX):

“Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras”
[Electronics]
Estimated arrival date: June 22 2009 - June 23 2009

I ordered the lens with Amazon Prime 2 day shipping. Based on the estimated arrival date I’d guess Amazon is expecting a shipment of lenses at their warehouse in the next day or two. Reviews are good and for $199 it seems hard to go wrong.

UPDATE: Amazon emailed me on Friday, June 19th saying it had shipped.

Tags: amazon, nikon

In praise of Nikon’s 70-300mm VR lens

Friday, May 29th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Good reviews of the Nikon 70-300mm VR lens keep coming. Wildlife photographer Moose Peterson has a huge kit of expensive telephoto lenses, but he still likes the 70-300mm VR, calling it Nikon’s best kept secret.

Likewise, Thom Hogan likes his 70-300mm VR and would choose it as one of only three FX lenses on a desert island. “You’re probably surprised with the 70-300mm VR. If you don’t need f/2.8, then you don’t need the 70-200mm. Indeed, you’ll like the 70-300mm at f/5.6 or f/8 better on an FX body. Close your mouth, that dropped jaw makes you look stupid. Really. The 70-300mm has very good edge to edge performance and doesn’t really start to fall down in any way until you start to approach 300mm. And even then, it’ll do in a pinch.”

Do the math

I like mine, too. It’s a heck of a lens for a reasonable amount of money - not cheap, but not crazy expensive. To realize how good this lens really is you have to take a look at what it would take to get a better lens.

At current prices (inflated due to a strong Yen) the 70-300mm VR is about $550. Weight is 1.5 pounds, length is 5 inches. The next longer lens, the 80-400mm VR, costs $1,500, weighs 5 pounds, and is 7 inches long. The next faster but shorter lens, the 70-200mm VR 2.8, is $1900, weighs five pounds, and is 8 inches long.

The weight of the 80-400mm means you’ll mostly wind up carrying it in a backpack and you’ll mostly shoot it off of a tripod. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - but it wouldn’t work for the kind of photography I get to do in my spare time. The 70-200mm is more reasonable, but pretty long.

You know how I carry my 70-300mm when I’m walking around? If it isn’t on the camera I stick it in the pocket of my Columbia pants. No problem. I do that all the time when I’m switching between the 70-300mm and a shorter lens.

I’m not putting down those other lenses in any way. They can do things the 70-300mm can’t. It’s just that they do them at double or triple the weight and triple the cost.

My review

I use the 70-300mm on a Nikon D40, which is DX a (1.5x crop sensor) body, but it’s an FX lens that works on the new full frame D3 and D700 bodies. Better, some say, than the 70-200mm VR, which will probably get a redesign to reduce vignetting on the full frame bodies. DX users won’t see vignetting with this lens because the image circle is overly-specced for a DX body. Whenever I look through the viewfinder with this lens I notice how very bright it is compared to my DX lenses.

This is a good portrait and wildlife lens, which was my original motivation for buying it. On a DX body it has the same field of view as a 450mm lens. I find that’s plenty for mammals and large birds, though not really enough for tiny songbirds. If you want to photograph songbirds you’ll either need to attract them with a feeder, stalk them, or get a second mortgage.

As a sports lens it’s limited by its maximum aperture of 3.5-5.6. That’s fast enough to freeze action outdoors on a sunny day. With a newer Nikon like the D90, D5000, D3, or D700 you can boost the ISO to extend its usefulness without sacrificing too much picture quality. If indoor sports is what you want to shoot you’ll eventually want a 2.8 or faster lens, which is where the 70-200mm 2.8 becomes the lens to have.

Autofocus speed is very good. The VR (Vibration Reduction) II system helps greatly in counteracting shaky hands, which means more pictures are keepers. The lens makes it easy to throw distant backgrounds out of focus on the long end. The quality of the out of focus backgrounds is good, if not up to the level of faster aperture lenses.

Sample photos

Hogan’s birding photos

Sports photos

Shooting across the river

Some pictures I’ve taken with the lens:

Continue reading the rest of this post right here ›››

Tags: d40, nikon

Long live the Nikon D40

Monday, May 18th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Nikon has finally discontinued the D40, the cheapest DSLR Nikon has ever made and a great, affordable tool for making photographs.

Over at Digital Photography Review, people are pulling out the photos they’ve made with their D40s. Ian Bramham posted some amazing D40 photos here and here. A sample:

His Web site is ianbramham.com. For anyone who doubts what a 6 megapixel camera can do, note that he sells prints of his work up to 30 inches wide and sometimes wider.

Previously: Cheap camera owners of the world unite

Tags: d40, nikon

I can’t see the appeal of the new Nikon D5000 DSLR camera

Saturday, April 18th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Even though I’m not ready to buy a camera right now I was looking forward to the new Nikon D5000. It was pitched as a replacement for the D40 (which is what I use ) and D60.

The appeal of the D40 and D60 is that they’re small, lightweight, and inexpensive - perfect for someone like me who wanted something more than a point and shoot but less than a pro DSLR. Yet in size and weight the D5000 is much closer to the D90.

The D5000 is also much closer to the D90 in price than I’d like. Where the D5000 is similar to the D40/D60 is mostly in the negatives:

• No focus motor for older AF lenses
• Cheaper pentamirror instead of a brighter pentaprism
• Lower resolution rear LCD
• No top LCD
• No second command wheel
• No battery grip/portrait grip option

I like my D40. I like the size, the weight, and the fact that it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. What I really want is a D40 with one of the third generation sensors and a few more features. This isn’t that camera. This is a cheaper D90 with some nifty features like the swivel LCD, but without many of the D90 features that would actually help me take better pictures. I’ll pass.

Tags: d40, d5000, d60, d90, nikon

Nikon D5000 and 10-24mm DX lens

Monday, April 13th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

The release is supposedly imminent. Check it out at NikonRumors.

Bali-angle LCD, 2.7 inch? [Swivel LCD]

D movie image editing and enhanced scene mode

Silent Mode AF

11-point target tracking AF

ISO3200high sensitivity support

Megapixel count is undetermined, but presumably at least 12 MP.

LATER: DP Review has full specs and a comparison with the D90 and D60. Sensor would seem to be the same as the D90. The D90 has a pentaprism vs. the D5000’s pentamirror, and the while the D5000’s LCD is on a swivel mount it’s about a fourth as many number of pixels as the D90.

Price is about $300 hundred dollars different, with a lens on the D90  that’s worth about $200 more. Granted, the D5000 is new and hasn’t been marked down yet, but if I were buying today and wanted the kit lens I’d be tempted to get the D90.

Tags: d40, d5000, nikon

Thom Hogan on used Nikons and upgrades

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

After reviewing years of his pictures from various Nikon bodies he has this advice (no permalink - get it while it lasts):

So, if you’re looking for bargains and don’t need high ISO much, the D2x/D2xs would be my choice amongst used offerings. The D200 is probably the best “bargain” amongst the group due to its all around decent image quality, and you can find new in box samples of this camera for substantially less than you’d pay for a new D90; the D200 performs quite well overall. So much so that I had one converted to IR and it’s my main IR camera now.

Another way of looking at things is “is it time to upgrade?” Here, I’ll look at each body and make a judgment about whether it’s time to move to a newer generation:

• D1, D1h, D1x: yes, to any of the FX bodies.
• D2h, D2hs: yes, to a D3 for more pixels, better really high ISO values; otherwise no.
• D2x, D2xs: no, unless you’re moving to a D3x or need high ISO regularly.
• D100: yes, to a D300.
• D200: no; I’d wait for a D400.
• D40: if you need more pixels, yes, to a D60; otherwise no.
• D40x: no; present bodies don’t provide enough more unless you move upwards in the lineup (e.g. D300).
• D50: yes, to a D60. (But note you may lose AF on some lenses, which may bring you back to no.)
• D70, D70s: yes, to a D90.
• D80: probably, to a D90.
• S1, S2: yes, to almost anything from a D90 up.
• S3, S5: yes, to a D700.
• Pro 14n, SLR/n: no, unless you need high ISO (D700) or lots more pixels (D3x).

Tags: d40, nikon

No Nikon D5000 at PMA

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

That was a letdown.

The D40 is being shown as discontinued all over the place. The D60 is still available. We saw a palette of them at Sam’s Club last weekend.

Previous item on D5000.

Tags: d40, d5000, nikon

Rumor of a Nikon D40/D60 replacement: the D5000

Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Nikon Rumors broke the rumor about a Nikon D5000 being introduced at PMA in a few weeks.The D5000 is expected to be positioned between the D60 and D90 in price and features. Most people are guessing the D40 will be discontinued and the D60’s price lowered.

Rumors slash reasonable assumptions are that the D5000 will be the size of the D40 and D60, seeing as how the next size up is already occupied by the D300 and the still-new D90. That would likely mean it won’t have an autofocus motor, a top LCD, or the option of a portrait grip. If you want those features, or a second command wheel or Nikon’s Creative Lighting System, you’ll probably have to pony up for a D90. The advantage over the D90 would be size, weight, and price.

The main upgrade over the D60 will be the sensor, which will almost certainly be the same excellent sensor as the D90. That would mean 12 megapixels with fantastic ISO performance, LiveView, video, and dust control. If the D5000 has the D90’s 3″ 920,000 pixel rear LCD that would be even better.

One feature I’d like to see move down to the D5000 is exposure bracketing. That’s a pretty basic digital camera feature which the D40 and D60 lack. Heck, my point and shoots had exposure bracketing. Without it HDR photography is all but impossible.

P.S. Nikon ran out of numbers in the DX0 line, so they had to go to DX000. How dumb would it be, then, to go straight to D5000? Any model number below that would be assumed to be a lesser camera. They should go with D1000 to prolong the usefulness of that namespace.

Tags: d40, d5000, d60, nikon

Milo the cat

Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Milo showed up at my house not long after I bought it. My roommate Josh and I were sitting outside and this fat and sassy cat just ambled right up. It was obvious he had been someone’s house cat.

At first I gave him some food outside. Then I bought him some actual cat food. Then I bought him an actual cat bowl. Eventually he got to come inside and much later I even put in a cat door. Growing up, my family had cats but I never thought of myself as a cat person until Milo showed up.

I’ve been taking pictures of Milo for years, but I’ve never felt like I captured his essence. These pictures of him sunning himself in a flowerbed are the closest I’ve come.

Continue reading the rest of this post right here ›››

Tags: d40, milo, nikon, pets

New Nikon AF-S 35mm prime lens for DX cameras

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Pretty cool. It’s an AF-S lens so it focuses on the D40/D60 (as well as any other Nikon DSLR), and the focus should be as silent as it on other AF-S lenses. At 35mm it replicates the 50mm field of view on a Nikon crop sensor DSLR. And it’s less than $200 retail. Assuming the picture quality is good this should make a decent lens for indoor or nighttime work on a budget. Good stuff, Nikon.

I was going to do a longer writeup, but Chris has already done it.

Tags: d40, nikon

Make your own Christmas cards online

Thursday, December 25th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Earlier this year we bought a Nikon D40 DSLR. We’ve been getting great pictures from it, so my wife decided to make our Christmas cards using pictures of the kids.

She found a red tablecloth in our Christmas boxes to use as a backdrop. You can see how the tablecloth is draped over the couch in the picture below. The girls are already so tall that next year we’ll need to hang the tablecloth from a higher point.

Our lighting couldn’t have been simpler. For some of the pictures we used the camera’s built-in flash, but we used available light as much as possible. We turned on all the lights in the living room and had the door and drapes open to let in morning sunlight. (One tip we’ve heard from multiple people is that kids are usually easier to photograph in the morning. As the day goes on they get crankier and less cooperative.) As a bonus, morning light and evening light comes in low, so it peaks in through the windows. You can see sunlight coming from a side window in the middle of that second picture above.

After taking the pictures I did some simple tuning in Google’s free Picasa software. All pictures got Auto Contrast (under the Basic Fixes tab) and one round of Sharpening (under the Effects tab). Each of those operations involves clicking a single button. A few pictures were cropped and a few more had red eye removed with the Red Eye button (also under Basic Fixes). Some other Effects you might try are Saturation (to boost the color) and B&W or Sepia (to remove the  color and create the look of a faraway classic).

My wife printed the best pictures on a card from Walgreens.com using their online printing service and picked them up from a local Walgreens a few hours later. Cost was $10 for 20 cards. The cards are ready to stamp, address, and email with no envelope required.

Making our own Christmas cards online was quick, inexpensive, and fun. We liked the results so much we’ll be doing it again next year. The only glitch was that Walgreens’ site lost our card several times before successfully saving it, so my wife had to recreate the layout more than once. We’re hoping Walgreens has that bug fixed next year.

Tags: d40, nikon

Cheap camera owners of the world unite

Monday, December 8th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Via Ken Rockwell, it turns out that the winner of the Metro Global Photo Challenge took the prize-winning photo with a pocket-sized Canon Digital Elph SD500.

I can believe it. The two photos of mine that have been published were taken with the previous-generation SD400, a little 4 megapixel point-and-shoot, set to automatic everything.

Here’s a similar story, found at Nikon D40 Photographer. Guy takes a picture. He uploads it to his Flickr account. Hollywood types contact him to get permission to use his picture in the Iron Man movie. He took that photo with the Nikon D50, which, while not exactly cheap, was the cheapest DSLR Nikon had ever made up to that point.

The newer D40 is even cheaper. I bought my D40 for $479 last year, which is less than I paid for the SD400 point and shoot four years earlier. Now they’re about $400 with a starter lens. A Canon Digital Elph is now less than $200.

The first rule of photography is “have a camera.” That means you need to own a camera and have the camera close at hand so you can take the picture when you see it. You’ll take more pictures with the cheap camera you have than with the dream camera you leave in the closet because you don’t want it to get stolen, or that you never got around to buying because it was too expensive. Affordable and convenient are wonderful virtues.

UPDATE: Linoge has some great black and white photos from a Canon Powershot point and shoot that sells new today for less than $200.

Tags: d40, nikon

DXO Mark camera comparisons

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Neat stuff. Check out the comparison of the Nikon D40, D90, and D700. Body-only prices for the three are roughly $400, $1000, and $2500. The D90 and D700 score better on image quality, but the big difference is high ISO performance. The D90 is almost twice as good as the D40, but the D700 is more than twice as good again as the D90!

That’s consistent with what I’ve been reading: the D700 and D3 at high ISOs like 3200 or 6400 have no more noise than most cameras have at ISO 400. You can increase shutter speed by three or four stops and crank up the ISO with no loss in image quality.

To do anything similar without using high ISOs you’d need expensive large aperture lenses, and even then you couldn’t achieve the same low light performance. (And of course there’s nothing preventing you from putting fast glass on a D700 to get BOBW.)

I’m sticking with my D40 for now. I’ve not even had it a year, and there’s lots more I need to learn to wring more performance out of it. I wouldn’t mind having a D90, but what I really want is for the high ISO performance of the D700 to trickle down to sub-$1000 cameras. Rumor is that Nikon will release new low-priced DSLRs to replace the D40 and D60 in first quarter of 2009.

Hat tip to Nikon D40 Photographer, which despite the name is a beginner’s-oriented site with useful links no matter what camera body you’re shooting. To keep your ear to the ground of the Nikon world visit Nikon Rumors.

Tags: d40, nikon

Intervalometer for Nikon D40 and D60, others

Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Following up on a recent post on intervalometers (time lapse timers), Dave at Pervasive Light points to this model, which works with the Nikon D40, D60, and many other models. So if you’ve been thinking of buying me something for Christmas …

Tags: d40, nikon

Nikon D40 for $415 shipped (expires October 26)

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |

Coupon code here.

Tags: d40, nikon

I popped another photographic cherry today

Monday, October 13th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 4 Comments |

When I got home from Florida I had a package waiting for me, and it couldn’t have been better timed. It was a camera cleaning kit. After a week on the Florida coast my camera needed it. It had sand everywhere from the beach and I had spots on my sensor from months ago beforehand, to boot.

The rocket blower helped get rid of the grit I could hear every time I attached a different lens. Then I followed the instructions to clean the spots off the sensor, which is the digital camera’s equivalent of film. Technically, I cleaned the low-pass filter that sits a couple of millimeters off of the surface of the sensor. Cross your fingers that the cleaning will get rid of gremlins on my pics like the ones visible below.

Cleaning the low-pass filter is slightly nerve-wracking the first time. It’s nice to do it on an entry-level DSLR like the Nikon D40 instead of something higher-priced. But really, it’s no big deal. Press lightly and it’s all over within seconds. When you’re buying cleaning solution buy the smallest size - it only takes a few drops.

More info at CleaningDigitalCameras.com. The kit above also has good instructions.

Tags: d40, nikon

Photography Bleg: 55-200mm or 70-300mm Lens?

Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 13 Comments |

My only lenses right now are an 18-55mm lens that came with the camera and a 50mm/1.8 prime. I’ve been debating which telephoto lens to get. Last night I had a great chance to take a picture of a hawk in a tree. He was just sitting there. I had the camera with me. I pulled over. I took the picture. This is what it looked like through the 18-55mm lens.

Eat your heart out, National Geographic.

For scale, I was standing on one side of the street and the hawk was in a tree cattycornered on the other side of the street about 50 feet from the road. Maybe 150 feet on the ground, another 50 feet vertically, so Pythagorean Theorem tells us that’s about 158 feet.

Clearly I need a telephoto lens. I’m ready to buy either the Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR or the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR. The two lenses have a lot in common:

• Nikon brand, 5 year warranty

• AF-S lenses (meaning they’ll autofocus on my Nikon D40)
• Both have VR (Vibration Reduction - equivalent to Canon IS - keeps image steady even when my hand shakes, allows handholding under longer shutterspeeds that would normally require a tripod)
• Apertures are basically the same at the same focal lengths.
• Both get very good if not outstanding reviews.
• Both are within my amateur photography budget. They aren’t dirt cheap but they aren’t outrageous.

Looking at the customer images on Amazon I see more good pictures from the 300mm than the 200mm. The 200mm has a sweet price and weight, but looking at the picture of Hawk Mini-me I wonder if it would have enough reach to take that picture successfully. Obviously the 300m is longer. Is it enough longer to make a difference, and to justify the extra price and weight? Talk to me.

Tags: d40, nikon

Took the Plunge on a Nikon D40 and a Photography Class

Monday, January 7th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 10 Comments |

I did it. Today I signed up for an eight week non-credit photography class at the Univ. of Tenn. that starts next Monday.

I also ordered a Nikon D40 digital SLR. What persuaded me to go with the Nikon over the Canon was Ken Rockwell’s recommendation. He’s a pro photographer who owns much more expensive cameras but uses the D40 for most things. He especially likes the small size and weight, nice LCD, re-programmable menus, and color histograms. He also likes it better than the newer D40x, which saved me two hundred bucks. (FWIW, it’s about time for Nikon Canon both to release new cameras in this class, so the lower price on the D40 is probably a pre-closeout price, which is OK by me.)

His explanation of histograms and their use in getting correct exposure was really persuasive, since exposure is so critical for taking good pictures. The D40 has color histograms that are easily accessible. Ken also has a free Nikon D40 guide.

The only other extras I bought were a $9 UV filter to protect the lens and a $13 wireless shutter release. I’ll eventually buy some other lenses, a camera bag, and a speedflash, but I’ll wait until I take the class and have a better idea of what to get.

Tags: d40, nikon