And I am most enthusiastic about the D100 Nikon. Having been committed to this brand for a couple of decades now through a series of bodies from F2, F3, F4, 801, & others, it was a big step to depart from film.
So what is so great about digital?
One obvious advantage is the ability to experiment with a number of shots of the one subject with no added expense, in the hope that there is one top result. A second is the immediate feedback that one has when viewing a photo result. This works well in detecting obvious bloopers such as misaligned horizons etc but is limited as ultimate quality is not readily apparent on the small monitor.
One area I found digital superior is in taking natural light photos inside of churches and other buildings. The digital images are far better than I was ever able to achieve with film.
So is 6 megapixels good enough? So far my answer is yes as I have some beautifully crisp studies and they are coming out better in Powerpoint than scanned photos.
Storage? This bugged me initially and deterred me from going digital but proved to be a no brainer. I travelled with two 512 mb flash cards, and found each capable of about 190 pics at full jpeg resolution (about 2.5 mb a shot). At day's end it was a simple and quick job to download the files into a 30 gb Nixvue Vista, a unit capable of holding up to 11,000 high res digital pics. Once back home the whole set of 7.75 gb downloaded to the computer via firewire in less than 15 minutes!
The slower job is transferring the files into Powerpoint, but it is a far quicker task than scanning in photos. So far I have not needed to manipulate any files using Adobe Photoshop because the metering system on the Nikon has proven to be so effective. However it is something I will look at before printing out any of the better studies.
BTW a big thank you to Canon. The introduction of their rival to the D100 caused Nikon to lower prices just before my purchase. And long may the competition between these two continue to benefit we consumers.
John
Peace at AA
