The Nikon D50’s name says it all. Its a Nikon. Its a digi-SLR. Any questions?
It took me two months of reading reviews before I finally settled on this cam. My other considerations were the Canon EOS 350D and the Olympus EVOLT. Since the Olympus camera had serious serviceability issues (read: terrible customer support), I narrowed my search beam down to the last two.
The D50 however, felt just right in my hands, as against the much smaller EOS 350D, which, is also much more elegant.
A camera according to me, should be nice and black and heavy... it gives me a greater sense of purpose holding such a camera than a silvery piece of cardboard.
The D50 ’’Outfit’’ that I bought, contained an 18-55mm Nikorr lense - a much better offering than the Canon one.
In photography parlance, I’m an amateur - an enthusiastic one at that. The purpose of going in for a digital SLR had more to do with saving on developing charges than anything else.
Here I’ll focus only on the main points I’ve noticed and wont go into too much technical detail.
The few things I’ve noticed about the D50 are:
~It seems robustly and solidly built... my 5 foot drop after slipping on slippery rock at Kanheri Caves will attest to that,
~The LCD is very bright and vivid,
~It is well designed and extremely ergonomical, although the 4 way button pad leaves much to be desired,
~The non-illuminated top LCD panel which several websites go on and on about is not an issue at all... most of the information is displayed in the viewfinder.
~The same is the case with the presence of one command dial. It hardly affects your picture taking in anyway.
~Noise in images is fantastically low, and the colours are very accurately reproduced, especially the shadows which the Canon EOS 350D tended to wash out.
The main stickler in the usage of this camera accortding to me, is defintitely the process of shifting between manual and auto modes. Its irritating - like trying to change your lense while being forced to listen to Britney Spears’ tearing through your radio’s diaphragm. I like shooting in manual, and if I ever use the auto function, it requires the flipping and sliding of 3 switches... one on the lense, one on the camera body, and turning camera’s mode dial. Tiresome at best.
The flip flash is great, although I would suggest going in for an external flash unit for a great bounce flash effect. Another essential addition is a 1 GB SD card.
In conclusion, although several people and reviews call this camera a dumbed down version of the D70s, its weight distribution, size and newer sensor all give it an edge over the D70s. The D50 is also much more portable, and looks sleeker too.
Also (this is my personal opinion), do NOT embarass yourself and go in for the silver bodied variant of the D50. Black is back for digital cameras. Silver has commenced floating down the digital river.
For a few sample images, one may visit my ’’plog’’ at https://spaces.msn.com/aakashbra
The technical specifications of this camera can be found on:
https://photographyblog.com/reviews_nikon_d50_3.php
Any questions or queries are welcome either here in the form of comments or in long (hopefuly unwinded) emails at aakash_b123@rediffmail.com
Cheers!
Aakash.