New gear: Nikon D40

New gear is always fun to play with ;)

Written on 01/31/2012 by Patrick Bregman

I've had a Nikon D90 for quite a while already (since August 2011), and was starting to think that while it is an exceptional camera for events and places where you know a big camera is no problem, it might be nice to have a slightly smaller camera for all the places where big cameras are not handy. I mean, I don't really like the thought of just throwing my D90 into my backpack and taking it with me everywhere I go. It's too heavy for those kind of things.

So for a while I've been carrying my Sony DSC-HX5v compact camera with me everywhere I went, but it was a huge step down from my D90. Add to that the fact that my kid brother was wanting to get a cheap and small dSLR camera, and the ones who know me better can already guess what happened. I went searching for a nice camera for him. Because I already have a Nikon and a load of lenses for it, it was not logical to go for a Canon camera, unless they were really cheap. How cheap? Well, a simple Nikon D40 went for as low as €120,- so a Canon camera had to come with a lens for under that price. Not gonna happen.

Hours later, my brother didn't want it anymore, but I was already looking to get the cheapest cam possible so I had a camera that was light and small so I could carry it with me just about all the time. And so I found someone close by who was selling her old D40. Made the appointment, waited till she got the camera from storage, tried it and bought is. So now I'm the proud owner of a (second hand) Nikon D40!

Nikon D40

Here you see the camera with the kitlens from my D90 mounted, a Nikon 18-105mm zoom lens, and a circular polarizer on the front of the lens. And while this camera is great for carrying it around all the time, it is also great for marco shots. I do my macro shots with the camera just centimeters from the subject, and a flash right above the subject. This is doable with the D90, but since it can only sync the flash up to 1/200 (0.005 seconds) it lets a little bit of light from the background in as well. With the D40, with flash sync up to 1/500 (0.002 seconds) this should be fixed because the sensor is less exposed to light. This means that these pictures will be easier the next time:

But there is something that I overlooked, and that is that the D40 doesn't have a flash commander. But this is no real problem, since I've already ordered an extender cord. I put one end on the hotshoe of my camera, and the other end goes to the base of my flash unit. And like that, I've added a bit of creative freedom to the positioning of the flash. And all that without sacrificing anything to the high flash sync speed.

More like this

blog comments powered by Disqus