Thoughts on my Nikon D200

After several years of lusting, longing and miserably failed attempts, I finally purchased the Nikon D200. I went local for the camera, after reading several user horror stories on respective quality control issues. For those of you who are curious, I went with Dan's Camera City, in Allentown, PA. It's a great store and their staff is quite knowledgeable on all things photography. And even better, so far I have not found any defects with my camera.

A more formal, albeit highly technical review of the Nikon D200 can be found at dpreview.com. If that's a little too geeky, check out dcresrouce.com, which is based out of San Francisco, CA. And if you're still not satisfied, Thom Hogan's site, bythom.com , offers another review, as well as providing a sh!t-load of useful information for the Nikon enthusiast.

Now, all that technical jargon is great, especially once you get into the nitty gritty of things, but I also like to look at more subjective reviews as well. And since this is the internet, allowing every asshole who can type a means of expressing him or herself, I decided to give my thoughts as well.

First off, if you're the type of person who can appreciate a well built piece of machinery, hell forget about machinery, a well built anything - from a desk to a suit - there is no doubt that the D200 will garner your admiration. Everything from an ergonomic standpoint is very well put together, not mention a lil' sexy to boot. I named my D200 "Niki" (as it is a Nikon - properly pronounced "knee" - "con"). And Niki is one badass bitch. She's got that athletic build, that exudes confidence and strength. But Niki's a lady no less, sporting all the right curves in all the right places. She's fast, accurate, and incredibly smart. Hell, I'd vote her into presidency if I could. I'd even go down on her. ahem...back to the review...

All of Niki's qualities wouldn't really matter much if the outcome was sh!t, but as expected, her performace was spectacular. I'm working on setting up my flickr page, so that I may properly show you what Niki, in the proper hands, is capable of. But if you can't wait for my photos, type in Nikon D200 on flickr.com, and it will bring up thousands of photos taken by Niki's numerous sisters and brothers.

Speaking of "proper hands", there was a slight learning curve involved with using Niki, but not nearly as bad as some reviewers or dpreview.com forum members make it out to be. Perhaps the only part of Niki's arsenal of photographic weaponry that caused me some confusion were her various auto-focus modes. Even then, a quick read got me up to speed. I do think that my own experience with photography in general helped a lot, but once you learn a few basic rules, you can pretty much apply them to just about any form of photography. And I guess that's the same for just about any form of knowledge...but I digress. If you're curious, my "older" camera is a Nikon FM3a. It's sexy in it's own right, stoic, and fairly capable. The lens attached is an all manual 45mm Nikkor (Nikon's lens brand) which I purchased with the camera as a kit back in high school. If anything this camera taught me the value of in-camera compensation, composition, and carefulness. Film is f*cking expensive. My point in all this is, I didn't have much experience with fancy autofocus slr's but since I knew the basic principles of photography (and a minute amount of computer literacy) I managed to get some nice shots the first time out.


That lens pictured on the Nikon FM3a has been on my D200 until today (March 10, 2007). I've gotten pretty nice photos from it, but I never did question that piece of glass when it came to quality. It was kind of a pain manual focusing, especially since the D200 does not have the split level focusing screen like the ol' MF bodies. But alas, my Tamron 17-50mm lens came via FedEx today...I know, shame on me for not getting a Nikkor. Hopefully you'll understand when you realize the Nikkor is roughly 3x the price of this Tamron - for very similiar optical quality. Preliminary testing shows this lens to be pretty sharp across the focal lengths, at a wide-open aperture. It's not razor sharp like the 45mm, but Tammy (my Tamron lens) was never touted as a prime lens. Tammy isn't as nicely built as Niki, but she keeps up. Auto-focus speed is pretty fast, much faster than me. And as you can see from the shot of Daniel, the duo performs well together. I've read some scary things about this lens, but as far as I can tell, Tammy is one hell of a broad.

Now on to software...Coming from film, where I primarily let the lab do all and any post-processing (which they do, those printers/developers calibrate every print - so you purists can shut the f*ck up when you talk about keeping the photo's integrity by doing no post-processing). I was surprised at the variety of effects I could accomplish with a little help from software. But I do have some thoughts on this issue, which I'll get to later.

I've been using Nikon Capture NX and Adobe Lightroom. Initial comparisons between the two show that Nikon Capture NX provides me with much better looking conversions. This isn't much of a shocker really, I'd expect the manufacturer to know the inner workings of their camera better than even the largest of digi-art moguls like Adobe. But unfortunately Lightroom is way better in the organize/view/select/delete/import department. I fully believe that Lightroom is capable of producing similar results in terms of image quality, but for some reason it takes much more tweaking than Nikon's software. I've read that this is partly Nikon's fault for not being as open with their RAW file intricacies. I really want an all-in-one solution but for now this will have to do. Mind you, these two piecees of software will only do basic editing, for more serious tweaking/special effects Adobe Photoshop is still required.

I haven't done any batch processing yet, nor have I printed anything. I have a feeling that Lightroom may have the upperhand when it comes to printing, at least from the controls I've played around with. I'm planning on writing a more in-depth analysis of software options later on. So check back if you're interested.

Now I mentioned earlier I had some thoughts on post-processing and digital photography. Back when I shot film, it was both a nuisance and a blessing when I chose a particular type of film. For example, the two main color films I used were Kodak Portra 400N (muted tones, great nuetral look for people or anything really), and Fuji Velvia (for it's ridiculously vibrant colors). I knew how each of these films would look when developed, they were consistent and as long as I got the proper exposure and focus they gave me what I wanted. With Niki, her custom image parameters are simply not enough to recreate the look of these films. Each image parameter only allows adjustments via Auto, 0, - , and +. Now, the jpegs straight out of the camera aren't bad, but to get the most out of each image I really need to shoot RAW and adjust afterwards in Capture NX.

Obviously this has it's positive points, each image can have an almost endless variety of color, tonal, and saturation - not to mention I can correct white balance issues on the fly (I'm not required to shoot one type of film at a time). But for a camera that costs a pretty penny, make that several thousand pretty pennies, I don't understand why there aren't more in the way of customizing image output in-camera. I understand that no one really wants to sit there and adjust photos on a tiny LCD screen on the back of the camera, but that's not what I want to do. Niki's got 4 custom preset banks where I can store unique image parameters. Through enough experimentation (which is half the fun of any art form) I could create a setting which gave me Kodak Portra type colors and contrast, and the other Fuji Velvia etc. Of course I'd still have the RAW files where I can edit them to my heart's content without any image degradation, but it could minimize the post processing time ten-fold. Now I've been reading up on Lightroom and Capture NX and I find that there are some ways to help with my predicament. I can save custom image parameters within the application and then apply them with one click. And each respective piece of software has thousands of increments to choose from. Not bad eh? Still, coming from the ol' film days, it feels a little like cheating. It would be nice if you could create an image parameter with the software and then load it on the camera as a preset. (I have read about one possibility, but it requires yet another piece of $oftware. I mean seriously, how many pieces of software do you need to work effectively?)

That's not to say the images straight out of Niki's in-camera processing are bad. Far from it actually. It's just amazing how much better they look with a little post-processing. I guess it's the digital equivalent to the darkroom. I do feel that this will help me with other aspects of photography, primarily lighting. I can focus on learning that once I can save up enough money to buy decent flash kit. So, I kind of lied about the learning curve. The basic principles of photography still apply, but now with digital I just have to apply them later on. And through no fault of my own - Niki simply doesn't let me do anything worthwhile in-camera (in regards to specific film types). That's all really, I'm sure once I adapt to this new found way of doing things it'll be smooth sailing.

While I know this is all probably very boring stuff to most of you who read my blog regularly, thanks for checking it out anyways. Anyways, more photos coming very soon!!