I bought this camera as a Black Friday special to give my wife as a Christmas present. She's an artist and needs to take very high quality pictures of her art for her portfolio. Point and click pictures just don't cut it when you're competing for a scholarship to a prestigious art school. I've enjoyed photography for years. In college I composed all my B&W shots with a 35mm Nikon N2000 SLR. I entered the world of digital photography with a Sony Mavica about ten years ago. It cost almost as much as the D40x and took pictures at an amazing .3 MP (yes, POINT three) Storage was simple -- stick floppy disks in the side. I still have boxes of floppies with pictures on them. Thank goodness things have changed. My next digital camera was a little Nikon Coolpix which has given me great service (I still use it as my ebay camera) I decided to stick with the Nikon brand and get the D40x. The package I purchased came with two lenses and a bag to put it all in. I switched the larger lens for a VR "Vibration Reduction" lens at the suggestion of the salesman. I think it was $50 more.
I enjoy the Nikon D40x for its ability to take great photos in virtually every situation. I set it to "auto" mode, compose the shot in the viewfinder and press the button. The photo then pops up on the nicely-sized LCD screen for evaluation.
It takes great pictures where point-and-clicks fail in low light situations, high-speed situations, and indoors. It's quick to use -- it doesn't seem to require time to warm up like pocket cameras. Turn it on, point, shoot. It takes longer to say than it does to actually produce your first picture. There are a myriad of settings and adjustments which I rarely use. I use it frequently to document the "Wild America" in our backyard. I keep it near the window to photograph the hawks, deer, and the fox that lives nearby. It's taken some wonderful photos in these spur-of-the-moment situations where I grab the camera and run outside to catch two birds fighting or the deer eating the apples I put out for them.
The battery life is amazing. I had initially considered buying a spare battery but I now see no reason to. I can take somewhere around 1000 pictures (without flash) until the battery dies. It's nice to not have to bring the charger on a weekend vacation and still not worry about battery life.
As far as dislikes... My biggest complaint is not of the camera, but the camera and photography magazines. They completely ignore this model and focus on the more expensive and newer Nikon digitals. I'm sure they are very nice cameras but I get a little sad to see this competent and affordable camera overlooked so often. I suppose that's not much of a complaint. Because most of this review is comparing this DSLR camera to a point-and-shoot "shirt pocket" digital camera, I suppose I should say that I dislike the size of the camera. As far as DSLRs go, it's small, but it's still a big camera, and an even bigger bag of accoutrements to lug around. I know, all DSLRs are that way, but it's definitely something to consider if you're on the fence between a shirt pocket camera and a DSLR. (A situation I think applies to many people reading this review)
Today I'm going out to buy a shirt pocket camera to compliment our D40x. This camera takes great pictures at neice's birthday party but a new pocket camera would be adequate for pictures of the little gal blowing out candles. It's just too big to use as a daily camera. I don't think I'll be taking it on our next vacation.
The camera and the great pictures it took helped my wife get a 40% scholarship and become one of ten students accepted into the MFA program!
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