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 Excellent light weight camera Aug 29, 2008
I wanted a camera that was not as heavy as the D200 or D300. I am very happy with the D40. The lens is a pretty good also. Together they are very easy to carry around. Good photos and accurate exposures from my point of view. I am an experienced amateur who takes a lot of family and floral photos. You will be very pleased with this camera and lens. I would also add the 55-200mm VR to complete the package.
Nice Camera & nice service Aug 26, 2008
It arrived on time & in perfect condition. It is definitively a great camera for beginners.
Very good, but..... Aug 25, 2008
I am generally satisfied with the D40. I'm an old school photographer who had been out of it since digital took over (except for using it occasionally in my job as a detective). My experience has been that most digital cameras are excessively complicated and do everything except allow you to have control over your photographs. I'm working on a project that requires extensive photo-documentation. When I found that it would be next to impossible to accomplish it with slide film, I bought this camera. So far it's doing the job and the software was easy enough to install (unlike most software that I have tried to install). I haven't had time to experiment with the manual feature yet, but I plan to before long. My biggest complaint so far is that it has no cable release feature. Much of my work involves low light shooting and maximum depth of field. It's not always possible to have a rock solid tripod. To me, it makes no sense to make an SLR without a cable release.
 My First DSLR Aug 25, 2008
I bought this camera because I wanted to have a better digital camera than a regular point and shoot one and wanted to advance from 35mm SLR (Nikon FM10 and N80). After waiting for 1 year (I was thinking to buy Nikon D50 at first) I'm glad to have bought this one because it fits my budget. I've owned this camera since 2007 and have taken a lot of great pictures with it, and I'm using the lens that came with it. I don't consider myself a professional photographer so I have not used a lot of its features.
For those who never use an SLR / DSLR camera before and would like to buy one, I fully recommend this camera. I think for most people they could get by with just using the "AUTO" shooting mode, just make sure you focus on the subject. It also helps a lot if you have a basic knowledge of photography.
 I'm a wacko Aug 24, 2008
I bought the D40 and kit 18-55 lens a few months ago here on Amazon. I have had only film cameras until now, except for a cheap Fuji p/s digital.
Not being familiar with digital cameras, for me it was kind of like trying to run the space shuttle. I, like some others here, looked at Ken Rockwell's pages for help and got some basic settings going that work all right.
After getting familiar with it, I decided that the kit lens sucks for a lot of what I like to shoot, which requires a wider aperture than the kit lens has. Not to mention that it sticks out of the camera quite a ways and I also like to be as invisible as possible. The honking big lenses just shout to everyone in sight that a photo is being taken (but I guess that doesn't bother all the shooters with the 18" long super zoom lens always attached). I am also not impressed with the autofocus, which sometimes won't lock on anything, dithering around back and forth until the subject isn't there any longer. And the camera won't fire if it isn't locked on something. So forget about photos of those flying birds.
After looking at the prices of the faster single focal length dedicated digital lens prices (and after recovering from cardiac arrest) I went totally in the other direction and bought two Nikon Series E 35mm film camera lenses from the 1980s, a 28mm f/2.8 and a 50mm f/1.8 for basic lenses. These are roughly 40mm and 85mm on the D40. These lenses don't couple with any electronic components in the camera except the aperture lever, and will only function in manual mode, happily neutering most of the camera's unneeded, sometimes silly, and sometimes difficult to use functions.
The image quality is pretty good overall, definitely better than the kit lens and these lenses cost me $30 each.
There are many other lengths of Series E lenses available at reasonable prices so I'll probably add to the collection at some point.
The lenses are really small and the camera is super easy to handle with them, just like an old 35mm.
I always leave the viewing screen in histogram mode, set the shutter/aperture where I think it should be for the light available, fire a test shot and quickly check the histogram. It's very easy to tell if the exposure is off, and equally easy to change the shutter speed if needed. It's as fast as adjusting manual film cameras I'm familiar with.
The only downside to this so far is that they are a bit hard to focus as the viewfinder screen is not fresnel, but the 28 stopped down at all has huge DoF so it's mostly an issue for the 50 when shooting wide open. I'm willing to put up with it because this is a better set up for me, more like a mechanical film slr, but with a 4gb card it will shoot almost forever. I leave the 28 on it most of the time for street shooting and the 50 is a fantastic portrait lens.
So, I give it a 3. It's easy to use and being digital it's easier to get the images in the computer than from film. The battery goes an incredible amount of time before needing a charge. Build quality seems adequate for people that aren't prone to dropping their cameras.
Image-wise, I don't think it's as good as a 35mm film camera loaded with slide film, definitely not as good as professional print film in some high contrast conditions, given the ccd's tendency to blow out highlights any time there is the slightest bit of high contrast lighting. Underexposure is often necessary and then hopefully retrieve the low values in Photoshop.
Still, it's a fun camera to use for snapshots and gives decent results, and I would recommend it in it's price range. I'm definitely not chucking my film camera for this one though.
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