River Lover

In the world of digital photography there is an absurd amount of hype around features that are not needed to make great images. While we all know (or hopefully know) that it’s the photographer, not the camera, but making an intelligent choice in a camera body will help.

As obviously stated in my post I have been using the Nikon D200 for some time. This out of date but once retailing at $1,600 camera body has treated me well, but I would not consider upgrading with the D300 now that it’s broken. For the time I will be shooting with Nikon’s elder, bottom of the line D50. Today I chose this camera over the D40, D40X, D3000 and D5000. Not just because it’s what I have, but if I was buying a new, price point camera it would be my pick.

The new Nikons have added in lots of fancy features that have nothing to do with getting the shot. HD Video, LiveView, and more megapixels. All marketing hype. What does the D50 have that makes this “inferior” camera retain my love? A motor drive for non AFS lenses. These are lenses with the AF motor built in them.

Nikon’s strength has been their support of the Nikon F mount lens system, and the ability to shoot lenses back to 1978, even on the most modern digital body. While the newer low end bodies support these lenses, they will not autofocus any older lens, including the phenomenal $100 Nikkor 50mm 1.8. One of, if not the sharpest lens ever made (due to its simplicity and length of production) and fast enough to shoot action in low light to boot. With a 35mm equivalent of 75mm it makes a superb portrait lens too! Included in my standard kit is the spendy but small $500 Nikkor 20mm 2.8 coming in under 10oz. Also fast enough in low light situations, nice and sharp too. Neither would autofocus on the aforementioned cameras.

The single reason I switched to the D200 was for sequencing. I believed the jump from 2.5fps to 5fps would be enough. It’s not quite enough though. The sequencing is ok, but taking one shot with good timing delivers equal results in my experience. In light of this I would jump all the way to the $5,000 9fps D3 if the budget allowed. Instead, for the time being I’ll save weight by carrying the D50, and sacrifice the wonderful plethora of external controls on the D200. In a tight situation these can make or break the shot because of easy access to ISO speed, Aperture value and so on, but you wont find them on the D40-D5000 either.

Some might ask only 6mp though? In the reality of megapixels, 6 will do just fine for standard online and print media. One of my cover shots from the D50 with the 50mm 1.8 looked better than another that was from the 10mp D200 with the Sigma 18-200, showing the well known fact that the lens is more important than the camera. Which brings up a nice point, that cheap lenses look better on the 6mp D50 because less pixels are packed into the same sized sensor that is in the 10mp D200, which will quickly bring out any flaw in the lens.

The short, I’ll miss the better buffer speed on the D200 and plethora of external controls. It feels like and is a well built camera, and is easy to adjust on the go.

On the D50 I will enjoy the base ISO speed of 200 over the D200’s base 100. This is nice for action. I dread having to navigate the menu system to change simple things, and the cheap plastic feel, but until some major funding comes through for a D3, we’ll see what I can produce with this “amateur” camera.

Of course I will send in the D200 to see if it’s cheap enough to fix, and keep my fingers crossed.