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?

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.