gear

THE DIGITAL SOAPBOX OF ANDY CLEAVENGER

NIKON D200

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Email:  graycard18@gmail.com

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This was my primary camera for the last year and a half or so. Sadly, I must now say goodbye to it.

I LOOOOVE the fit and finish of it...  more than any auto focus body I’ve ever used (digital or film). Its metal body and rubber grips have the feel of a serious camera, not like the prosumer, plasticy DSLRs farther down the food chain. Some might be prompted to ask why I don’t feel this way about the D2X. It’s metal, it’s got rubber grips, it even has more buttons and screens and flashing lights than the D200...  guys are supposed to like that crap, right? To be honest, I don’t know why. Whenever I pick up the D2X, I don’t feel much of anything for it. I’m simply reminded of how heavy it is. Don’t get me wrong...  the D2X is a workhorse camera and I have few complaints with it. But picking up a D200 just feels right in my hands.

My love for this camera goes beyond superficial cosmetics. This camera has most of the features of a D2X packed into a body that’s not much bigger than a D70. While I’ve always felt that the D70’s 6 megapixels is quite adequate, I must admit that I enjoy the slight bump in resolution offered by the D200’s 10 megapixel chip. For my purposes 10 MP is the perfect size. The files are bigger without being too big. The D2X’s 12MP sensor borders on too big, in my opinion. The final TIFFs from the D2X are something like 40 MB. A file that size doesn’t mean my employer is going to suddenly start printing their annual report at 11x17. It just means my hard drive gets filled up faster and I’m forced to spend time archiving stuff more often. I do NOT want any more megapixels out of a camera. You hear that, Nikon? Anything more than that and all they do is choke the system.

I also like the screen better on the D200 as compared with the D2X. I have no metrics to back this up, but it has always seemed sharper to me and easier to view from different angles. However, it’s worth mentioning that I have a love/hate relationship with LCD preview screens in general. In my experience nearly all of them display an image much brighter and with greater contrast and color saturation than the final file actually has. On all of my cameras I have scaled the brightness down to match the actual file as close as possible. Even then, the purist in me hates having to force contrast and saturation later in PhotoShop to reclaim the image I thought I got when looking at the back of the camera. The D2Xs that I just got at work (I know, I know... it arrived just before the D3 was announced) probably has the most accurate screen of all of my cameras, but only because I scaled the brightness waaaay back. I don’t count this against the D200 though, since it’s a problem I’ve had with every digital camera, ever.

The viewfinder on the D200 is nice and big, just like a film body. A vast improvement over the D70. Makes verifying focus much easier.

The noise levels on the D200 are also a bit nicer than the D70 (as they should be). I find I can push the exposure on the D200 files a bit farther before banding starts to rear its ugly head. Of course I hate having to push exposure at all, but it’s nice that with the D200 I can recover a greater number of shots that I would have otherwise trashed.

A lot of people have recommended the D80 to me as an inexpensive version of the D200 (i.e. same 10MP chip, same big viewfinder, same big LCD screen, etc. just in a cheaper body). Having played with a D80 for only a few minutes, I really only have first impressions to go on, but it actually felt more plasticy to me than my D70. Indeed, dimensionally it is smaller and lighter than the D70, which a lot of people see as a plus. Not me. I don’t want smaller and lighter. After being a professional photographer for 7 years now I have to admit that I want a camera that doesn’t make me feel like a tourist. I want the muscle car. I feel I’ve earned it.

But the biggest reason I will never go with a D80 is that it uses SD cards, not Compact Flash. I would have to buy enough new cards to go with it that I would end up spending what it took to buy the D200, which is the camera I really want anyway.

Now...  as I write this the D200 is officially on its way out. The D300 has been announced and is expected to arrive sometime this month (at least for those that put their names on waiting lists 6 months ago). I have to admit that I’m curious as to what the D300 really has to offer me that the D200 does not already deliver. From everything I’ve read, it’s *supposed* to have better auto focus in dim light, and it’s *possible* that it might, just maybe improve noise levels by a stop or two, making available light shooting at high ISOs a less noisy affair. Several of the wedding photographers that I know are anticipating its arrival for these reasons. But, as someone who shoots his personal work in broad daylight at the lowest ISO possible, I don’t really care about either of these potential advancements.