Buying a DSLR Part 2: The Camera

In May of 2007 I started looking for a digital SLR. We were expecting our second child in a few months, and the little Canon S230 point & shoot that had served me well for several years just wasn't cutting it anymore. Also, we had tried a couple of professional portrait places and for the cost and hassle we weren't satisfied with the results. We figured that with a good camera we could do our own portraits and have great everyday shots at the same time. After quite a bit of research I settled on the Nikon D40. Since then Nikon has come out with the D40x and the D60 (among others). They both cost quite a bit more and the only significant difference is that they're 10 megapixels whereas the D40 is 6 megapixels. As I pointed out in Part 1 though, megapixels don't matter much.

I also looked at the Canon Digital Rebel XT and XTi, but they were quite a bit more expensive and didn't really offer anything that the D40 didn't except a few more megapixels (see below). In my opinion the most formidable opponent to the D40 is the Sony DSLR-A200. It's close in price to the D40, and although there are a few advantages to each, the big advantage of the A200 is that it has in-camera image stabilization which eliminates the need for having lenses with image stabilization. If you decide to go int this direction, B&H has a great package on the A-200 and 2 lenses.

Since I bought the Nikon D40 and still recommend it, that's what I'll be focusing on for the rest of this series of posts

The D40 is actually pretty small light as far as SLR's go, and is natural and comfortable to shoot with. I used Ken Rockwell's D40 User's Guide to learn about all the buttons and menus and make some adjustments to the default settings. If you're used to using a point & shoot, the first thing you'll probably notice is that you have to look through the viewfinder, as there's no real-time image displayed on the LCD screen. This has always been the case with DSLR's, although they are starting to make models that offer what's called live view. In my opinion it isn't worth the cost to step up to those models, and using live view typically adversely affects the speed of the camera.

The D40 comes with a battery and external charger. I usually only charge the battery every month or so (unless we're taking a ton of pictures, like on vacation), which equates to maybe 500 pictures. It will last less if you use the built-in flash, but you're still good for a couple/few hundred pictures. I could go on forever about all the different features, but I'll stop here and let you ask questions about anything that I didn't cover here.

Drawbacks - The camera obviously isn't perfect, so I'll let you know about the few things I've found to nit-pick about it:

• There's no auto-focus motor built into the camera, so you won't be able to auto-focus with older lenses, only the newer AF-S(or AF-I) lenses.
• No Auto Bracketing. This is a more advanced feature and it's not like I'd use it every day, but it would be nice to have.
• Most of the time the internal color correction is great, but occasionally the images come out a little dark. It's a simple fix in any image editing program like Picasa, but it's an extra step.

Here are a couple of professional, in-depth reviews of the D40 that I used before making my decision:

• Ken Rockwell
• DP Review

We bought ours online from from B&H. B&H has been around forever, I've bought from them many times before and will continue to buy from them. They have a great website, good prices, they're reliable and have good customer service (and no, I don't get kickbacks from them, although if they're reading this they should know that I would certainly accept). They occasionally have used or demos available for a reduced price. Typically I wouldn't be crazy about buying a product like this used online, but I would recommend it with B&H. That's actually how we got our D40 and lenses. Having said all that, don't hesitate to shop around, but beware of places that offer a ridiculously low price and then try to sell you overpriced add-ons.

After using the D40 for over a year and a half now and taking about 8,000 pictures with it, I'm completely extremely satisfied. Sure there are a few high-end features it doesn't have (see below), but I don't really need them and I'm not willing to pay twice as much or more to upgrade to something like the D90 or D300. If for whatever reason I were in the market for a DSLR today, I'd pause to look at the Sony A200, but probably end up with a Nikon D40.

That's it for the camera. If you have any questions about anything I covered or something I didn't, ask in the comments.

Tomorrow I'll talk about lenses.