Wednesday, November 19, 2008

You little beauty
















Walking around with a relatively large and heavy device like the Nikon D100 gets a little wearing after an hour or two. Hiking long distances into nature parks, covering community events, attending car shows and such can be an exercise in severe pain before one is through - particularly when one is getting on a bit.

About twelve months or so ago, reducing work commitments to part time, I decided to get myself a capable camera for personal use which could be lived with for hours at a time without the need for paramedics, high end pain medication and/or hospital emergency rooms by day's end. So I bought a Nikon D40 with basic 18-55mm zoom lens.

Now I know that there are a lot of experts posting to dpreview.com (with positively months of experience) who will swear that it is well nigh impossible to obtain high quality images with anything less than a $3000 kit. I am here to bust that myth. I have been through the mill a few times, have run a few thousand rolls of film over 40 years or so and have recently learned to tell a good image from a poor one. I am far from the best photographer in the world but I HAVE come up with a few nice images in my time.

I have to tell you that the D40 is very much my camera of choice. In fact I will go so far as to say that the D40 is the nicest compromise between performance and convenience I have EVER used.

It is light enough and small enough to carry around all day and to hide under parkas when it rains. It is so uncomplicated and undemanding that one can learn to get the most out of it very quickly. It contains all the features I need (i.e. only several times the features of any film SLR). The kit lens is astonishingly good, producing excellent low distortion results at almost any aperture and focal length. It is extremely good to handle, such that even at the end of a long day it is easy to obtain camera shake-free images. It is quiet and fast. It can deliver surprisingly clean images at ISO 1600 from its low pixel density sensor.

In short, it releases a photographer from all of the appalling encumbrances which most other cameras thrust upon one - so much so that he/she can simply get on with the task of capturing images. In the words of the old Minolta ad for its legendary SRT 101. "It never says no to a creative challenge." I am simply delighted with it.

Of course the D40 is not designed for use in professional circumstances. If I was to work it every day (hundreds of images at a time) it might ultimately fail me. On the other hand, it is now so cheap that I could buy FIVE D40 kits for the same cost as ONE D300 with 18-200 lens. If the camera ever lets me down I will go buy another one (or whatever replaces it). Big deal.

See lots of D40 pictures in my "picture a day" gallery at: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs

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