D40

robmiller

robmiller

robmiller

Soldato
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
16,522
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London
Well, after a week and just over 2,000 shots, I'm going to weigh in with my opinions.

(No sample shots because they all suck ok :o)

Things I love:

  1. The handling. It's positively tiny for a dSLR but it's amazingly comfortable, and manages to feel pretty durn solid without weighing a ton—something I didn't expect from an all-plastic construction.
  2. Battery life. Not unique to the D40, of course, but as someone who upgraded from a compact I'm absolutely blown away. 1300 shots from a single charge? That's insane to me.
  3. The speed. Again, not unique to the D40 and again accented by the fact that I upgraded from a compact, but it's so awesome for pretty much everything to be instant. I also love that it goes into a sleep mode, so you can walk around with it "on" all day and not run the battery down, yet always be ready for an instant shot.
  4. Auto ISO. A minor thing, but it's a real timesaver that's got me more than a handful of shots that otherwise would've turned out a blurry mess. You tell it the maximum ISO you want to use, tell it the shortest shutter speed it should come in on, and if necessary it bumps up the ISO to get you the shot. I'd much, much rather have a noisy shot than no shot at all, but leading onto my next point...
  5. High-ISO performance. I've not had a bash at ISO 3200 yet but 1600 is perfectly usable and much, much less noisy than I expected.
  6. The menus. Yes, I'm shallow, but this is important to me. The D40's menus are well-designed, look lovely and are completely customisable, which is neat.
  7. Shoot-until-your-card's-full when shooting JPEGs, not like the sporadic shoot until your buffer's-full and then wait and then fill the buffer and then wait on the 400D.
  8. The kit lens optically. It's not tremendous, but it's better than I thought it'd be. It'll serve admirably as a stopgap solution until I've saved for an 18-200mm VR.
  9. The LCD screen. It's mahooosive and bright and bold and wonderful.

Things I don't love:

  1. The build quality of the kit lens. It's no worse than I expected, of course, and the lens is still incredible value. They had to scrimp somewhere, it just means I'll upgrade later that's all.
  2. RAW+JPEG only stores "basic" quality JPEGs, making it much less useful. I still find it more useful than shooting RAW-only, though.
  3. No exposure bracketing. I can understand why Nikon dropped this, but I would've found it useful. No biggie, though.

I'm chuffed to bits with it, and glad I picked it over the 400D. Lovely stuff, would recommend it to anyone.

Next on the purchase list is a Sigma 10-20mm, a Nikon 18-200mm VR, and a Sigma 30mm f/1.4. This is going to bleed me dry...
 
robmiller said:
Next on the purchase list is a Sigma 10-20mm, a Nikon 18-200mm VR, and a Sigma 30mm f/1.4. This is going to bleed me dry...
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This weekend I hope to buy a D40, and that list is the order in which I was thinking of upgrading lenses :)

Congratulations on your purchase... Now lets see some pictures
 
 
robmiller said:
They're all processed to hell tbh, I like 'em dark
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That's not really showing the camera''s ability thou, I could've taken them in a disposable looking at those shots. Need some unprocessed stuff.
 
You've got some promising photos there but they are all far too dark. You might want to look at getting your monitor calibrated. Dunno what graphics program you are using but if you've got Adober Gamma that will be better than nothing.
 
i'm not looking for critique ok photography is an entirely subjective and entirely personal affair ok

robertgilbert86 said:
No bracketing!? Are you sure? That sounds odd to me, surely it's in a menu somewhere.
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Nope, absolutely positive.

No Automatic Exposure Bracketing?

Bracketing is the practice of taking shots above or below the indicated exposure for a given subject, a way to make sure that you get at least one properly-exposed image of difficult subjects. Most digital cameras these days offer some sort of automatic exposure bracketing, and all prior Nikon DSLRs did as well. We were thus rather surprised to find no option for bracketing on the D40. In our own shooting, we find ourselves using the auto-bracketing feature quite frequently. While it does give you three times as many shots to deal with on the computer later, it's a great hedge against lost detail due to blown exposures on tricky subjects. We recognize that Nikon was aiming for dead-simple usage on the D40, but auto exposure bracketing is a feature we think even relatively novice shooters could use and benefit from.
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http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/ND40/ND40A5.HTM
 
It is great camera, I'm thinking of getting D40 or D40x due to its size and for great JPG quality.

Having no Exposure Bracketing doesn't worry me as I never used it on D70s I had.
 
barnettgs said:
It is great camera, I'm thinking of getting D40 or D40x due to its size and for great JPG quality.
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Have a look at Ken Rockwells site for a comparison and his (slightly fanboy) opinions on it, I'm going for the D40 :)

alexisonfire said:
Pretty good review on youtube that i thought some people might be interested in.
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I was just watching that very same video... erie :eek: :) - good review though
 
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