Pointers on buying which second hand camera

[wire-screw]

Hi all,

I need a bit of advice. I've been shooting a Nikon F3 film camera for the past 10 years and have a nice collection of Nikon D lenses. I've got to the point where the inconvenience of film is outweighing the idea of paying for a digital camera. I don't take that many photos and what I do take is slow and static - all studio or outdoors on a tripod and naturally coming from 35mm film I don't need the pixels. The two most important things for me are: it needs to be full frame (framing on my lenses is burnt into my mind) and it should last a long time (>10 years). My budget is around £600 but I will stretch for the right thing. I would prefer Nikon F so I don't have to sell and buy new lenses. I'm thinking of the Nikon D810. It's a little out of my preferred budget but it seems well made and hits all the other key points.

My question is, do you think this is a good idea? Should I buy a small camera brand new? Does the D810 have any hidden flaws or oddities?

Many thanks!

 

[Kei]

I moved from an F5 to a D810 in 2015 and have not had any complaints in the last 7 years of using it. If you aren't bothered by the improvements made to live view and the menu interface/screen, there is nothing really wrong with the D800/800E either as I used to borrow an 800 before I bought my 810.

The only complaint I have had in all this time is with the compact flash card support. CF cards bigger than 8GB were quite patchy on support. Only sandisk extreme and lexar seemed to want to work. SD cards are a non issue and I've never had any problems.

 

[wire-screw]

Thank you for this. Looks like the D800 is the one! I think I’ll be sticking to SD cards, I’m doing anything crazy that would require high speed or reliability.

 

[Snapshot]

But note that the camera you want to last ten years is already ten years old so will be twenty at the end of your desired period. This may be a bit of a stretch for the electronics.