Nikon D-200 comments

Interesting comments from Phil Askey regarding the outstanding new D-200. The full review is at DPreview.

" When it was announced in November last year the D200 caused quite stir (and not just in the Nikon camp). It was clear from the start that about the only thing this camera shared with its official predecessor (the D100) was the Nikon badge and it's '00 name. From a design, build, features and performance point of view this camera really creates its own niche, it would be a pity to label it as 'semi-pro' because in use you soon realize that it's a professional camera. Which brings us to the competition, from a build/features point of view it's clearly ahead of the Canon EOS 20D/30D and in my opinion a step above the EOS 5D, a baby D2X."

Phil Rudin

Phil's very thorough review reinforces that these are 4 fantastic cameras that are capable of very similar results in the hands of capable photographers.

I'm very happy with my choice and I'm sure others are also.

Karl

I think that the comments comparing it with the 5D is a bit inflamatory by Phil

Most people in the market for a pro-level DSLR are going to be persuaded first anf foremost by the kit that they already own. So more important is how the D200 compares with the D2X:

This quote from Phil sums it up best:

It would be fair to describe the D200 as a 'compact D2X', while some features have been removed to preserve the D2X's uniqueness you would be hard pressed to find a situation (other than high-speed crop continuous shooting) where the D200 couldn't stand up to its bigger brother.

And for underwater use the much lower price of the D200 (in case of the F word) and the smaller size for travel and also smaller housings really makes the D200 the better choice for nearly all serious UW Nikon shooters, IMO.

Alex

p.s. That said, I count myself as one of the exceptions!

One useful UW feature that this review pointed out that I hadn't considered before is selectable speed continious mode. This would be useful in taking a series of strobe shots. Taking some test series at say 1/2 power should give you an idea of how fast your strobes can keep up, then you could set that speed and shoot continioous shots with confidence.

The D70 can't do that, but the DS-125s can keep up at about 1/2 power for a few shots.

And from another well respected web review site, Rob Galbraith's:

"More importantly, we've shot the D200 and 20D side-by-side for available light basketball over several weekends this winter, and the 20D is by far the better camera for this purpose. Not only were the ISO 800 through ISO 3200 frames massively cleaner and more usable, the percentage of in-focus frames was signficantly higher. In fact, we've ruled out using the D200 for this sort of assigment again. So, we don't think Nikon has in the D200 a camera that's a clear winner over the upcoming 30D by any means."

Depending on who you ask, each camera will have their own strengths and weaknesses...but in the big picture (pun intended! ) The biggest strength lies in the nut behind the viewfinder, not the nuts, bolts, chips etc that make up the parts between viewfinder and lens.

I will be going the 10D-5D route mainly to recover the loss width of my 16-35L, 28-105 & 15mm FE.

My 2 cents.

Stu

Here we go

Karl

I just couldn't resists! Besides, I'm still using my 10D.

Stu

I'm a nuts and bolts guy and tend to fixate on the final image quality. To me, about the only page worth reading is this one:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond200/page21.asp