Nikon D-1

Someone offered me a free D-1 Nikon. I have no experience with SLRs. He said that when it came out it cost him 5k. He is offering it to me free of charge tho no lenses will come with it, just the body. My question, is it worth it to take it from him considering whatever the costs of decent lens might be.

Steve B)

You can certainly learn on a D1, it was a fine camera body, but don't expect its images to be of competitive quality. It was a lower resolution camera that was particularly noisy by today's standards. I would even suggest that most of today's digicams produce better images than the D1.

If you go the D1 route, you still need to invest in lenses and doing so will lock you into the Nikon system. Considering that even the entry level DSLRs today easily outperform the D1, you may consider the extra cost of one of those to be a reasonable investment because it will give you much better images and allow you to choose which system you want from the beginning. You may choose Nikon anyway, but at least you are choosing based on what you want rather than what's compatible with an obsolete system.

I threw my D1 away.

Thanks Craig for the good advise.

Steve B)