D40 - Nikon’s New Low-End DSLR Announced
November 22nd, 2006
Nikon’s newly announced D40 significantly lowers the cost of a DSLR. The Nikon D40 is small, light and undeniably cheap at just $599/£449.99/€679.99 with the new 18-55mm kit lens (it won’t be sold as body-only). This pricing puts the D40 $300 below the D50. This new 18-55mm kit lens is a updated version of Nikon’s 18-55mm lens improved for the D40. As usual Phil Askey has and in depth review of the D40 over at www.dpreview.com.
I think Real estate photographers using the D40 would get the best result if they added a wide-angle lens. 18mm with a 1.5x field of view crop (effectively 27mm) is on the ragged edge of what you can get by with shooting interiors. Be careful though when choosing a lens for the D40 it can only auto focus with lenses that have built-in focus motors.
As with any DSLR being used for interiors, I’d also recommend a external flash unit to give you the power to light a room nicely. Nikon has designed a new external flash (the SB-400) for the D40. The SB-400 unit has a guide number of 21 (m at ISO 100 at 18mm) and has a shooting distance of 60 cm to 20 m (2 to 66 ft).
One Response to “D40 - Nikon’s New Low-End DSLR Announced”
Marc Lacoste November 28th, 2006 at 8:58 am #
Note that at this time, the D40 is at the same price than the D50 which has a much lower actual price than its introduction MSRP one yaer and a half ago.
You gain those features:
# larger, higher definition review screen
# higher ISO 3200 sensitivity
# more compactness and lightness
but lost those:
* only internal focus motor AF-S and AF-I lenses autofocus
* three AF sensors, down from five
* top LCD status display removed, information provided by the back screen
* direct access to resolution, white balance and sensitivity settings removed
A good thing is that Nikon keep the 1/500s (unlimited in fact, electronic) flash sync.
For the SB-400, I’m not sure it could be useful for interior photo because its coverage is only 28 mm equivalent. It should not be noticeable with a 24 mm eq., but not under, unless with a wide-angle converter like a sto-fen omni-bounce.