When I decided to upgrade from a point & shoot digital camera to a dslr in May 2007, this was for a good reason: none of the rules of photography I had learned could really be applied to my Canon A540.
Really long exposures were impossible due to the 15 seconds limit, but what really bothered me, was aperture. On my old Practica TL1000 I knew what I was doing, and I knew what to expect. On a P&S this is almost impossible. First of all, the aperture range is very limited, most of the time from f/1.4 to f/8.0, and secondly, it doesn't really matter what you set it to, the sensor size is so small, that your depth of field will almost always be huge, unless you go tele and very close.
For a good introduction on the difference between sensor sizes and how they relate to depth of field, go to this tutorial on the cambridgeincolour website.
So, being fed up with all that, I decided to go for a DSLR. If there's one thing that I knew if I should go for a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera, is that it was gonna cost me. After having decided on how much I was willing to spend, countless days of reading reviews, sleepless nights of guilt (do I really need such a camera?) and hours of holding different cams, I went into the shop and bought myself the Nikon D80 with the 18-135mm kit lens. I do not agree with Ken Rockwell about this lens being a waste of money though. As a first lens and being in the kit, I think it's the best you can get for little money with a great zoom range and it can be sharp as hell.
At the time of my decision, there were 4 rather new models for me to choose from: the Canon 400D, the Sony Alpha 100, the Pentax K10D and the Nikon D80. Now they're not all completely equal as some say the Pentax is one pretty step beyond the other ones, with the D80 in between, but in practice I think they pretty much compete with each other.
Now here's five simple reasons why I didn't regret my choice:
- A sturdy grip. None of the other three cams felt as good as the D80. It feels perfect in my hand, this in strong opposition to the 400D or the Alpha, which feel too small and a little plastic. The Pentax K10D came very close though. This was the main reason why I went Nikon and not Pentax. After holding it, it was love at first sight. I think once you've hold a D80, you consider the 400D a toy.
- A bright, huge viewfinder with options. The viewfinder is a lot larger than the one in the Alpha or in the 400D, only Pentax wins this one with an even larger one. Nikons viewfinder is partly electronic, so if you look through it without a battery connected, it looks rather dark, but it brightens up a lot when connecting the battery. The reason for this are probably the 11 movable focus points and the gridlines, which can be turned on and off in the viewfinder. I have the gridlines on all the time and wouldn't wanna do without them!
- Top LCD: I hardly ever use the back LCD, only for a quick view at the histogram after the picture is taken. Nikon's Top LCD is at the perfect position for me and displays all necessary data. One thing that I would have been missing a lot on the 400D.
- Two rotating wheels at the perfect position: like in every good slr you can change aperture and exposure with two different wheels, one at the front and one at the back. Wouldn't want to lose this. K10d has this too, but to me the placement is not as good as D80's. I also tried Canon's 30d, but I really didn't like where Canon had put the buttons and the wheels. Felt totally awkward. (Even though my previous point and shoot was a Canon and I really liked it.)
- Screen Protection Cap: I hate scratches on LCD screens. Nikon understood this and my D80 is standard equipped with a transparent plastic cap that protects my screen from dust, scratches and other vandalism.
Now, of course there are things that my D80 does not have compared to some of the other models:
- Dust Removal: all the other three cams have some kind of dust removal system. The D80 doesn't have this. In the beginning I was a bit afraid of the whole 'dust syndrome', but now I know that this is actually just a marketing trick. If you take care just a little bit, dust will never become a problem. I bought a little air blower, and about once in a few months I blow the dust out of it. Moreover, dust only becomes pretty visible at apertures of f/18 or smaller.
- Image Stabilization: K10d has this. It will probably just a matter of time before all camera's have this built in instead of in the lens, but I don't miss it. Image Stabilization (or Camera Shake Reduction) can never replace a tripod. It will give you some advantage in low light situations, and with a very fast lens this might be interesting, but then again, Nikon has this in the lens.
- Weather Sealing: once again K10d. This is probably the only feature that I'm really missing at the moment. When I was out in the mountains last month, every time it started snowing I was hurrying to get my cam in the bag. I know the D80 can hold up quite well, but I wouldn't want to take any risk. Weather sealing would be awesome: I'd love to take pictures in the rain or in the snow.
Currently I'm shooting everything on complete manual mode and in the RAW format, so all the other nice options like in-camera image-editing possibilities and shooting modes do not really apply to me, although they are a nice touch.
Note that none of the cams I compared are full frame sensors, so what I told before, about 'rules of photography not completely applying' is true a little bit for these too, although it comes a hell of a lot closer to normal photography. Moreover, buying a digital full frame sensor cam is way over my budget.
There's one more thing that I would love to see implemented though. On the D80 we have this 'func' button on the front side, quite easy accessible when looking through the viewfinder, and that can be programmed to one of several different functions. I have mine set at ISO. So when I press it, I can see the ISO on the display and in my viewfinder. Now the one thing I hate about this, is that pressing it doesn't let me change it by using one of the wheels. To change it, I still have to press the ISO button at the back, which is pretty annoying as this button is not at an ergonomical position. I think this feature can't be too hard to implement in a firmware update.
Besides that, it will be most of all me that needs upgrading instead of the cam.
Now, in a perfect world, there would be only one cam with the most efficient features of all of them. Alas we live in a throwaway-society with too much crap on the so-called 'free market'.
