Of course, if you shoot in RAW and do the legwork once to develop the camera calibration that makes CP Red look "right", then every photo you take after that is good to go. You get hue/saturation adjustments for the primaries, plus a shadow level adjustment.

Plus, a well-built calibration will take the color temperature into account, so your CP red will render accurately whether you're taking a picture at sunrise/sunset, in a railyard lit by floodlights, on a normal sunny day, or in open shade. Show me a film that does that well.

Bird

If a D40 can focus on a Hummingbird amongst stalks, it is good enough for me. We frequently focus on the capability of the equipment but in the end capturing the moment is what counts.

I have a SB-800, Flash Command mode works fine on a D40. I am one of those that has 10 plus Speedlights, for multi-flash.

I wanted to make a GPS for my D200. So far all the parts is still sitting in a box. I would like to know how many of us are using GPS attachments for EXIF data. I am actually one of those that always carry a GPS. I bought the D200 over the D80 due to the 10 pin connector. But in the end, GPS will be hard to use simply because it take 2-3 minutes to lock on to the satellites at a new location or a power on. By the time that Hummingbird flew away the GPS is still looking for the satellites.

D40 is good for more situations than people portray it to be.

I never said it wasn't. I actually think that the ONLY feature differential that most users would miss, relative to the more costly Nikon bodies is the Focus motor. Because unlike every other feature that's missing, this one substantially limits the access to the vast secondary market for Nikon lenses.

If you were to count ALL of the Nikon AF-S lenses that can be bought for under $500, you are left with around 8 possible choices. One single 35mm prime, and the various kit zooms for the various Nikon body, and the 70-300mm VR. That's it, and several of those choices are redundant, and other than the soon to be available 35mm lens, not one has a large maximum aperture. Plus, not having a focus motor greatly complicates the issue of 3rd party lenses as well, pretty much all Tokinas are out, and only a handful of Tamrons have it. Sigma has mostly updated their lineup, but the others have not.,

If you were to look at the reasonably priced widely available AF-D lens choices, which WON'T autofocus on a D40 or D60, but will on all other Autofocus Nikon bodies, you have over a couple dozen Nikon choices, including a range of fine fast primes from 20mm to 200mm, plus pretty much every autofocus 3rd Party lens ever made - including several lenses that are far better at the wide end than any of the AF-S kit lenses, such as Nikon's quite excellent 18-35mm lens.

I don't think that any of the other limitations of the D40 and D60 are too serious for anyone new to SLRs, but the lack of focus motor is, only because it so drastically limits the owner to Nikon's mediocre or slow kit zooms. At least they are coming out with the 35mm f1.8 prime. Before that, there was not a single available light lens within the cost parameters that most owners of these two Nikons would ever consider, that would autofocus on these two bodies. It was a glaring hole.

To my fellow photo nerds: Are you still helping the OP? :rolleyes:

C'mon!

I don't accept the notion that any new SLR photographer would be happy if confined to inexpensive slow kit zooms, and right now, that's what the D40/D60 do.

with proper colour management, it should actually be very easy to get the exact colour. there's no need to muck with photoshop layers and masking.

no need to be concerned with keeping it in a cool, dry and dark place, protected from fire, flood, etc. and the fact that it is impossible to have identical copies.

shooting multiple photos makes film even more expensive, particularly with sheet film.

although they may not have faded very much, it's definitely not zero. digital does not fade at all. in fact, software, displays and printers get better, so in the future, the image quality improves.

most dslrs have a lot of buttons so the reliance on menus is minimized and you can turn off any feature you don't want. i can't think of any dslr that can't be a 'fully manual slr' if the user chooses. and at least the menus use text; older nikon bodies such as the f5 had numeric custom functions and the user had to memorize which was which (or carry a reference card).

they're not confined at all. most first time slr users (film or digital) buy one or two zoom lenses and that's it. they don't want fixed focal length lenses and they certainly aren't going to comb ebay or keh for a good deal on used lenses.

the d40/d60 has been one of nikon's best sellers. there are a lot of happy users.

What you are actually saying is, they ARE confined, but they are ignorantly happy about being so. Perhaps, but I happen to know plenty of D40/D60 owners who got AF-S sticker shock when they tried to get another better lens beyond the 2 kit zooms. Maybe they aren't going to search ebay for older value lenses, but buying a good used lens from a KEH, B&H, Cameta or Adorama is hardly a leap. Too bad most of those bargains won't work for them (with autofocus). The most glaring hole is that of a good wide angle. The siimple fact is, every single Nikon kit lens sucks in the 18-20mm wide range - especially in terms of vignetting and freedom from distortion. There's a perfectly good Nikkor 18-35mm (but not AF-S lens) out there that easily fixes that problem. There's a perfectly decent Tokina 12-24mm (but not AF-S lens) out there that not only fixes that problem, it opens up the whole new horizon of super-wide. There are even some surprisingly decent (as in noticeably better than the Nikon kit lenses at 19-20mm) dirt cheap Tamron and Vivitar 19-35mm lenses out there (also not AF-S). There is NOT a perfectly decent 18 to 20mm wide lens out there for less than $500 that autofocuses on a D40/D60.

I've got a very carefully chosen kit of 7 autofocus lenses in the Nikon system ranging from 14-400mm, and including 4 fast primes. Not one of these lenses cost me over $415. Exactly one of them (My Sigma 14mm f2.8 - a lens that virtually NO D40/D60 user would plausibly buy) has a focus motor. I know that the argument is that I'm not the target market, but the fact is, if the D60 had a focus motor, I very likely would have bought one as a lightweight backup body - instead, I went with a D80 as my primary body, and a used D50 as my backup body.

If you confine the lens selection to your views, sure.

I have the D40 and D200. More time than not I will have the D40 out. With a 12-24mm, 17-55mm, 18-200mm, 105mm Micro as well as the kit lenses, our D40 is not limited to inexpensive slow zooms either. All of my lenses have internal motor.

I am happy to manual focus if need be also. I still have two complete sets of Canon FD in use.

not at all. there's nothing ignorant about not wanting a collection of lenses. not everyone is a camera geek.

most entry level slr buyers buy one lens with the camera, possibly a second kit lens, and never buy anything else. since all of the kit lenses are af-s, a focus motor is something they won't ever use. it's just taking up space, so why include it? therefore, it was removed for the d40/d60 and the camera was made smaller and lighter.

that's the target market of the d40/d60.

So far when I've shot under artifical light ( which is rarely) I just follow Kodak's recommendations in their tech pubs and use a Wratten filter to correct the light as I shoot. So far it has worked well, since there really is only 2 main types of industrial lighting I only need 2 filters.

$20 on filters seems easier than new camera system + new software + new computer to run it and store the images + plus downtime to learn everything.

How many of those lenses other than the kit lenses cost under $400? I would guess none. Most people who buy a $400 camera are not looking to buy $1000 lenses along with it - I don't think you'll find too many folks who ONLY own a D40 or D60 who also own $2-3K worth of lenses. And those who DO consider spending $1000 on a good fast zoom probably also consider buying primes.

I'd be shocked if you didn't initially buy the D200, and bought the high end glass with it, and THEN started using it on your D40 which you got as a second body. It's silly to suggest that someone who bought a D40 as their ONLY SLR is going to even think seriously about buying 12-24 Nikkor, or a 105mm Micro, while those are perfectly reasonable lenses for a D200 user to own. Once you own them, sure, they work on a D40 as well. But nobody who's primary camera is a D40 is going to be paying the freight for those lenses.

I have no qualms about manual focus either, but AF bodies are vastly inferior for this compared to manual bodies because the viewfinder is not designed for it. I also own Nikon F3 and FE bodies for manual focus with film - as well as an Olympus E-300 with a Katz Eye screen that mounts and meters my old Nikon AI and AIS glass with a $20 adapter. And my D50 has a Katz-eye screen, so one CAN properly manually focus with it.

Most of my deliberate serious work is done with primes. I only use zooms for convenience sake. None of my 24mm, 50mm, or 180mm primes will autofocus on a D40 or D60, and I don't see that changing.

In any case, back to the point of the original post in this thread. If the OP wants an inexpensive Nikon outfit, I contend that a D80 is a better choice than the D40 or D60, because not only is it a more capable camera, when it gets down to choosing accessory lenses that go with it, it's also a less COSTLY camera - for anything beyond the 2 kit lenses. If the 2 kit lenses are all they will EVER want, then by all means, get a D40/D60. But anything beyond that, especially for good wide angles, the D80 becomes less expensive as well as more capable.

FD gear is really cheap right now, you can get some excellent lenses for next to nothing. I picked up a mint 20-35 f3.5L for $200 and a 50 f1.2 for $30.

Going back to the OP, that's why I was suggesting something along those lines if you're the sort of person who has christmas pics at the start and end of the roll with summer vacation in the middle. Capital cost of the equipment is all that really matters, especially when the end goal is only a stack of 4x6" prints to put in an album.

No way. Even for FD-mount, that's amazing. I could see finding a 50mm f1.4 for that price, but not an f1.2.

The rub, of course, is that the FD-mount is the only one of the better manual focus lens families that hasn't been practically adapted to some digital body.

Here's my recommendation for the OP. The Canon rebel or similar entry dslr from Nikon. A wide to normal zoom and a telephoto zoom. And yes digital. This is a vacation. S/he will want to post pics on Facebook or his/her blog. You can't do that easily with film and certainly not while on vacation. Then if s/he become an enthusiast s/he can upgrade to whatever makes sense at the time and will have a better idea of what s/he wants. I'm a Canon person cause that's what I started with (film).

That's a nice recommendation, which I would wholeheartedly agree with, but Nikon doesn't make a wide to normal zoom that autofocuses on the D40 or D60 except a huge f2.8 lens that costs well over $1000. They only make wide to tele zooms that are pretty lousy at the extreme wide end. That's my entire point. Their 2 wide to normal zooms include one that won't AF on their low end DSLRs, and the aforementioned huge expensive beast I mentioned above.

Yep, it came on a mint F-1 body I picked up on Ebay and $30 was the premium above what F-1's norminally sell for. It must have been some sort of insitution that was selling them as surplus, as the seller had 6 identical F-1's ( no AE finder) with 50 f1.2's (not the 1.2L unfortunately).

True, the FD glass is manual only that's probably what keeps the price down. I also got a 300/2.8 from a collector for $700 and I doubt it had ever been out of the case. The white paint was totally unmarked, even where the lens hood clamps on.

You can get 300mm f2.8 manual lenses in live mounts for that price, although not in true mint condition. I paid under $600 for my Nikkor 300mm f2.8 AI ED manual focus lens a couple of years ago. But it was only in about 7.5/10 condition.

actually they make quite a few lenses that work just fine (far more than just two), and they aren't lousy at all.

WTH are you talking about? :confused:

Among current AF-S Nikkors that will AF on the D40/40x/60:

First there is the original 18-55 AF-S ED [$120] which is equivalent to a 28-80 and is decent, though not stellar, throughout the range

Then there is the new, better all-around 18-55 AF-S VRII [$150] which is quite good at 18.

Then there is the 18-70 AF-S [$320] which is equivalent to a 28-105 which is good throughout its entire range.

Finally there is the 16-85 AF-S VRII [$620] which is equivalent to a 24-130 and it very good at the wide end and excellent through the rest of the range.

Well, please let me know which ones you mean, because all of the following have serious barrel distortion issues at 18mm:

18-55mm, 18-55mm VR, 18-70mm, 18-105mm VR, 18-135mm, 16-85mm VR (the best of a sorry bunch at 18mm), and 18-200mm VR (more expensive, but still has the aforementioned problem in abundance).
I can't seem to find any other Nikon AF-S zooms besides these that can be bought for under about $800, and none of those above pass muster for delivering straight, undistorted lines at 18mm.

The only Nikkors that do are the 12-24, the 18-35 non-AF-s, the 17-35mm f2.8, and the 17-55mm f2.8, and only the non-AF-s 18-35mm is within the budgets of many D40/D60 owners - but, again, with no autofocus on those cameras.

If, on the other hand, you feel that any or all of the lenses I listed in the first group above are perfectly good at 18mm, then we'll simply need to agree that you're a lot less critical about your wide angles than I am. Because they all suffer badly from linear distortion at 18mm. I need a wide angle that renders straight lines as straight, not as arcs.

Neither the 12-24 nor the 18-35 render "straight lines" at 18mm. They both have visible distortion.

Barrel distortion is an as-of-yet unavoidable problem with extreme wide-angle lenses, particularly wide-angle zooms.

Even my $1700 14-24 f/2.8 [which is currently the best lens of it’s kind regardless of brand] has some distortion at 14-16mm.

The Nikkor 12-24 at 12mm has mustache or complex distortion which is very difficult to correct. From about 15-18 it has simple barrel distortion which is easy to correct but there none-the-less. The truth is that in absolute terms that lens really doesn't shine until about 20-24 and, IMHO is significantly over-priced for a lens with consumer-grade build and an f/4 maximum aperture.

The 18-35 is another mediocre lens that also has visable barrel distortion in the 18-22mm range and it is woefully soft in the corners until f/8, it also flares like a SOB and has problems with chromatic aberations [color fringing] to boot.

I'll take your word for that, since I don't use the Nikkor 12-24 lens (I have heard that both Tokinas are better). That's why I prefer primes at the wide end. I am pretty darn pleased with my 14mm f2.8 Sigma lens (at least on a DX camera and a 1.3x crop camera (Kodak DCS-760). Although I've heard that this lens is soft in the corners of a full 35mm frame, I've only tested it on DX and 1.3x crop) My "tests" of this lens in full frame have been severely limited to looking through the viewfinder of my Nikon F2. I have yet to run a roll of film through with it.

I agree that it flares, and that it's soft in the corners wide open. As for barrel distortion, it's much milder than the wider range kit zooms. All very wide lenses flare. Anyways, I am new to the world of distorting wide zooms. Coming over from the Olympus system, where they make two SUPERB wide zooms (the one I used was a fabulous 11-22 f2.8~3.5 with negligible distortion, that also cost me under $600), it's been frustrating to find any wides in the Nikon system that compare, other than Primes or very expensive FX zoom lenses that are overkill for DX bodies.

To your surprise, most of these came $100-$500. I lucked out on a used 17-55mm and the 12-24mm cost a tad over $400 used. The 18-200mm came on the D200 as a kit and it must cost close to $700 standalone. We needed the 105mm Micro for work and it cost around $800 new.

So I don't know why you keep on saying they cost over $1000. You might have done a good job looking for primes. Other people have done good jobs looking for AF-S'. I am in Tokyo this week. I will browse camera shops when I have time.

Yodabashi Camera: Heaven on earth!
http://www.photoness.de/yodo_analog/

Yes, also BIC Camera in Yurakucho. I will be near the Yodobashi store on Saturday.

The Softmap stores at Akihabara has a used equipment department that has good deals sometimes. For instance, I got our D40x body cheap when the D60 came out. Used equipment are warranted for 30 days and any missing items are noted on the tag.

I got a Canon 35-105mm FD one ring for $10 in Nipponbashi in Osaka last trip. Yen at Y89/US$ hurt to some extend.