Let me start off by saying, I am not a professional photographer. Or for some of you, that’s request.getParameter(“Mike”) != “Pro Photographer”. (BTW, I know that’s not a correct string comparison, so don’t write me.) In college I majored in New Media, with a focus in web development. That offered me the unique opportunity to experience classes in art, photography, digital video and of course web development. In my photojournalism I learned the basics, flash on camera is bad, mmmkay (w/ exceptions like fill flash), fill the frame, etc. But when it comes to photography, at this stage in the game, I’m a prosumer. Granted I have my coworkers in photo services at my disposal for questions, which puts me at an unfair advantage to most. But the prosumer angle is the angle I’m taking when I write anything about my camera, it’s ease of use, or it’s picture quality.
The D40 is small and light, or as one pro said, “cute.” Despite my testosterone telling me, no gadget should be declared cute, I humbly agree. It’s much smaller in size then ‘more professional’ models. At left you can see it side-by-side with a friend’s D70.
Please note however, that the D70 in question also has a larger, faster lens then the D40 with it’s kit lens. However, the body itself is still much smaller, and the kit lens is also smaller and lighter in weight, but a bit slower due to smaller diameter glass and smaller range in aperture.
Despite the D40 being smaller, it still packs a lot of punch, and offers some feature’s from it’s big brothers and sisters. For instance at right, you can see the drastically larger LCD pulled from the D80 which almost dwarfs the rest of the camera body when looking at it from behind. When looking at it from the top, you’ll also note that the status LCD, familiar to those of us that used modern film SLRs, is missing from the D40, which is a departure from the styling of the D70 and the majority of Nikon’s dSLRs. Don’t worry though, this information can be prompted to display on the LCD, and in some ways, offers the information in a much more understandable fashion. More to come on that, in a later write up.
The only drawback I find from the physical size of the camera however, is a lack of space for my pinky.
I apologize for the pics, these were taken with me holding my D40 in front of the D70 on a tripod, in an attempt to show my hand size compared to the camera body. What you can see however, is that without squeezing all my fingers together, my pinky is bumped off the camera body where it is left to it’s own devices to find a place to hang out. I don’t find this a major drawback, as I have medium size hands, but anyone with larger hands should try holding the camera for a while before buying it.
Overall, I rate it’s size as a selling point. As a prosumer, I won’t be conducting multi-hour photo shoots. I’ll be looking to be able to compactly pack this camera to go on vacations, kayaking and to family gatherings, where I don’t want a huge, heavy camera getting in the way.
In my next review, I’ll look at some of the features of the D40, including it’s built in help system and graphic representation of settings.
