Nikon D40 SLR Digital Camera Review

Posted by William on Dec 2, 2008 in Cameras | Comments Off

The Nikon D40 just may be the best entry level SLR digital camera on the market at this time. Hundreds of users have given excellent reviews and a combined 4.5 star rating for the D40. Why not 5 stars? Well, this Nikon is not perfect but pretty close. The videos and reviews below will provide you with information about all the features and good reasons you should thiink seriously about investing in this SLR. There are list of pros and cons toward the end as well as a video presentation of pictures taken with the D40.

5 Reasons to Ditch Your Compact Digital Camera for the D40

Nikon D40 Digital SLR Camera Review

Devastating its predecessor the Nikon D50 Digital SLR camera, the all new compact and affordable point-and-shoot Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera comes at a significantly lower price. With a subtly different set of features Nikon has trimmed some of the ‘less important features and have included a range of new features including the custom Auto ISO feature available on the Nikon D80 Digital SLR cameras. Nikon appears to have concentrated on what makes a good camera. A solid viewfinder,a short shutter lag, and an exceptionally short viewfinder blackout. On the negative side the Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera does not have an internal focus drive motor and as a result no mechanical focus drive pin. Rather it has CPU contacts allowing Auto Focus only with AF-S and AF-I lenses which have built-in focus motors.

This means the Nikon ‘standard’ lenses the Nikkor 50 mm F1.8D and the F1.4D will be manual focus only on the Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera. The difference in the lens mount of the Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera and this is the mechanical focus drive pin at about the 7 o’clock position on the mount of the Nikon D80 Digital SLR camera. I personally purchased the camera and my family and I have been taking pictures non stop since purchasing it in January 2007. I highly recommend the Nikon D40 Digital SLR camera for an entry level professional grade camera.

I also would suggest purchasing a large memory chip I purchased a 4GB chip for under 100 dollars at Futureshop and it held over 1600 photos at the highest resolution the camera offers. Hats off to Nikon, for delivering a solid, affordable digital camera with multitude of features and resisting the temptation to enter the chase for more mega pixels.

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An Octogenarian Reviews the Nikon D40

Not everyone agrees that the D40 is a great camera. There are reasons you may not want to purchase this model. As you will notice from the articles below, the feature that is pointed out as negative probably won’t matter to you much unless you a professional photographer or are planning on becoming one.

Why I Won’t Buy a Nikon D40

I have to admit the Nikon D40 is an impressive point-and-shoot digital SLR. Particularly if you compare it to it’s siblings the Nikon D80 and the Nikon D200. You get many of the features of the D80 for quite a bit less money and for this reason the D40 has literally replaced the D80. Reviewers have pointed out that one of the D40’s shortcoming is the D40 doesn’t autofocus with non-AF-S lenses, it does however work with old pro AF-I lenses.

That’s not the reason I’m not going to buy the Nikon D40 though. Nikon chose to leave out one feature that creates a bigger problem, at least for me…

There is an emerging frontier in digital photography known as High Dynamic Range (HDR). In HDR photography you take a minimum of three images with three different exposures, one that is normally exposed, one that is 1 stop underexposed, and one that is 1 stop overexposed. Because you are taking three separate photos and ultimately merging them into one photo, they must be perfectly aligned.

To be able to pull off HDR with any reasonable amount of success one needs a camera that has the ability to do auto exposure bracketing. Which means once set and you press the shutter and the camera fires three shots with the exposure compensation incorporated into each photo. With the Nikon D40 you do have exposure compensation but each time you want to compensate exposure you need to do it manually. What this means is that to do HDR photography with the Nikon D40 you would need to use a tripod each and every time and manually (fiddle with the camera) to achieve the minimum three images necessary to create an HDR image.

Nikon chose to leave auto bracketing off the D40 feature set. The absence of this feature immediately cancels the Nikon D40 as a serious HDR candidate.

Too bad! I would have bought this camera in a heart beat if only Nikon had included auto bracketing.

Final Note: At Digital Camera Tracker we monitor pretty much every single review for most cameras on the market. For the Nikon D40 we’ve tracked over 30 reviews and not one single review has even made mention of the missing auto bracketing. Perhaps it is not important to everyone else but to us it was a deal breaker.

Pictures Taken with the Nikon D40

Pros and Cons

Pros:

1. Nice out of the camera result picture quality
2. Affordable price
3. Compact size and light weight
4. Large and bright 2.5 inch LCD
5. 2.5 frames per second
6. B/W, Sepia, several more in-camera editing features.
7. Instant power on, fast autofocus and no shutter lag
8. Noise is acceptable at high ISO settings. Auto ISO settings available.
9. Great 18-55mm II AF-S kit lens.
10. Great battery life (400+ on a single charge. 1000+ if flash is not used).
11. Auto (flash off) mode available
12. 1/500 flash sync

Cons:

1. No direct button to change QUAL, WB and ISO settings
2. Grip comfortably but might be a bit too small for some people
3. No top LCD and no front command dial
4. Autofocus will not work with non AF-S or non AF-I lenses (such as the 70-300m G and 50mm f/1.8D lens)
5. No AF/MF switch (have to use the switch on the lens)
6. Only 3 autofocus point
7. 6 Megapixel (More Megapixel needed to print larger than 12 X 18 at 300 dpi)
8. No night landscape mode in pre-programmed settings
9. No in camera image stabilization (like Sony and Pentax) but Nikon has lenses with it (VR).
10. No depth-of-field preview button

If you are looking for your first SLR, you will be hard pressed to find a better option than the D40. For just a little more than a good compact, you can take your photography to the next level. Watch Product Reviews did a price survey and found the best deal at Amazon.

Get your Nikon D40 SLR Digital Camera today!

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