The Next Step- DSLR

Last time was all about mistakes, one mistake after another. They say that the only good thing about mistakes is what you learn from them. Well; here's what I learned!

• I was perfectly happy with the Nikon glass. Whenever I did my part the picture looked great.
• I LOVED VR (vibration reduction).
• I HATED the all-in-one format of camera, especially in a "compact" style that crammed everything together and made handling compromises.
• I couldn't care less about the "scene modes" that they put in consumer cameras. Whenever I used them (which wasn't very often), I spent most of the time overriding this and that on them.

So...what to do? I figured, if I held on to the Coolpix 8800, the value would drop like a rock since Nikon had ceased production of that line and wasn't replacing it! Furthermore, I was seeing lots of accessories for it on eBay listed as "new" for ridiculously low prices. This is never a good sign unless you intend on holding on to something. It's a computer industry strategy they use when a product is being replaced and the manufacturer tells the wholesalers to dump all their stocks. The retail on it was originally $1000, I paid $600-700 for a few month old specimen. So I took pictures of it, packed it up and put the thing on eBay ASAP! In the end, I got close to $500 for it and counted myself lucky. Taking that amount and a some money that I had accumulated from selling computers, I had around $1000.

At this point, I drove my wife crazy over then next month or so, constantly researching, watching eBay and Craig's List. During all that research, I came across 2 sites that were a great help: http://www.kenrockwell.com and http://www.bythom.com (more about them later). All that research led me to the following conclusions:

• It's all about the sensor size. When you get a big DSLR sized sensor (typically APS-C or otherwise known as DX size), megapixels aren't all that important and 6Mp is about all you need for typical picture taking and printing up to around 11 x 14. There are of course bigger sensors like the FX (full 35mm film size, or even bigger like on the Hasselblad digital back), but those are priced for people who make money with their equipment and ridiculously rich people.
• Glass is the important thing, not the electronics (body) since that's going to be out of date within a few years anyway. Good lenses will outlive several camera bodies and so, unless you want to lose lots of money replacing your lenses, you'd better love the system you buy into. Because, it's just like the old days (with few exceptions), the different mounts aren't interchangeable.
• The hated enemy of digital SLRs is dust!

So, I ended up with the following parameters that I created for myself. I needed a camera capable of at least 6mp, of a big enough manufacturer where it would be easy to find lenses and I wouldn't have to worry that they'd go under any time soon. Don't laugh, the 35mm camera industry from 1960s to the 1990s is littered with the corpses of some very good brands and it even happened fairly recently to Minolta/Konica the inventor of the modern autofocus camera! Of course their technology was bought up by Sony and lives on in that line, but still..... Then my take on four-thirds system is that the jury is still out, so that ruled out about 4 brands (Olympus, Panasonic, Sigma & Leica- like that's was ever going to happen). Pentax was kind of in a rut at that time and I realized that most of the independent lens manufacturers didn't make glass in their mount. At that point, I ran up against one of my toughest decisions: built-in dust reduction or not. At that time, some of the manufacturers were putting that in to some models, but they were either on cameras/systems I didn't want or they cost too much. So I decided to make it less of a factor by going the "super-lens" route.

This left the 2 big dogs: Nikon and Canon. Nikon was old-school and Canon was a little more cutting edge. After reading quite a bit, I decided that I (mostly) agreed with Ken Rockwell (the Thom Hogan site backs up most of what he has to say, but in a more even-handed way) and that Nikon wasn't the end-all-be-all of resolution, but tended to operate faster and more accurately when speed is of the essence. Personally I think this is due to the half-a-century of mostly making equipment for professional photographers where it was more important to get the picture under any circumstances vs. getting the best technical picture. I'll have to warn any readers that reading Ken Rockwell isn't for everyone; he's HIGHLY opinionated and kind of irritating, but for me, he was basically right on the money. Remember, my original development in photography was photo-journalism.

OK, so now we have a brand, so which model. Well that turned out to be a backward question (remember, glass first). What I really wanted to do was to minimize the possibility of dust on the sensor and the number one way to stop that is to minimize lens changes. At that time, Nikon and only Nikon had a "do everything" lens with VR; the 18-200mm/f3.5-5.6 (27-350mm 35mm equivelent!). That's a lens that goes wide to long-telephoto with decent speed and the ability to be hand-held like a lens 2 stops or more faster! This lens alone made the Nikon/Canon decision for me (of course, Canon has since come out with their own version). After lots of looking, it looked like I would be able for buy one used in Exc or Mint condition for $600-700 making my camera decision a lot easier. $1000 minus $600-700, leave $300-400.

During that time, what $300 to 400 could buy you in a Nikon was either a new/almost-new D40, a used D70 or D100. All 3 camera used the same 6mp sensor. The D40 was the newest (read newest firmware & other electronics), smallest and lightest. The D70 was older/heavier design, but has similar electronics as the D40 (meaning the iTTL flash system). The D100 was Nikon's semi-professional offering that was a little long-in-the-tooth with older electronics. But since it was designed as a "semi-professional" offering, it had some features I really liked such as the ability to add a virtical grip that housed an extra battery. Not only was this a huge plus in taking portraits, but the added mass is a real bonus when using longer lenses in helping to dampen camera shake. This is were frugalness comes into play. I had to plan ahead to be frugal! I had read that some of the older Nikon mount lenses wouldn't work on the D40 since it's size and weight advantage came from eliminating the onboard auto-focus motor, so REQUIRED the newer lenses. This would eliminated the huge used market of older Nikon auto-focus lenses out there that are fairly cheap at this point.

So, a combination of finances, research, planned frugality and specification led me to the D70. I did indeed buy the 18-200/f3.5-5.6 VR lens which is every bit as good (for my needs) as advertised and almost never comes off the camera! I did in fact take advantage of the built-in focus motor on the D70 by finding a good deal on an older 70-300/f4-5.6 ED lens that allowed me to take some amazing wildlife pictures on our trip to Alaska a few weeks ago in June!

So it all worked out, but am I living the fairy tale "happily-ever-after" with the D70? ....or is there more in living with that camera....which is what I'll get into next time.