personal review of nikon D50 after 1 years ownership (Nikon D50)

Name: doyz1

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Product:	Nikon D50
Date:	30/08/07 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: user friendly, quick start up, robust feel

Disadvantages: battery grip connectors, onboard flash a bit disapointing

This is a personal review of the nikon D50 and not a technical one. for a technical review of the D50 visit the nikon website. i have had my D50 for coming up on a year now and prior to buying this unit i went out and had a good look at other manufacturers equivelants. My main reasons for going with the D50 was it was going to be my introduction to the digital SLR world and i didnt want to spend a small fortune on a camera that i would not use to its full ability. having played around with the cannon and sony equivelant the main differance for me was the feel of the camera, the cannon when held left my little finger floating around underneith with nothing to grip. and the sony i felt like i would break if i held to tightly. as this was going to be a camera i would be using as often as possible i wanted somthing that felt good to handle. lets face it you dont buy a pair of shoes that dont fit just cos they look good. As for specification differance between the other cameras and the D50 there is very little in it. sure its only 6.1 MP but unless your are planning on printing images on A2 paper and larger your never going to notice the differance. the standard 18-55 lense that comes with the camera is a great lense for portrait shots etc, in fact its the only lense that i take with me to weddings etc due to is versitality. one of the first things i did once i had the camera was to subscribe to a good quality digital photography magazine, these magazines help you to get the most out of your camera and explore the differant modes available to you. as with most camera of D50 equivelant it has many automatic modes for given situations like portraits, low lighting shots, action shots etc. but to really get the most out of this camera you have to go to one of 4 available modes: shutter priority, aperature priority, program mode and full manual. make no mistake about it i had to spend quite a bit of time reading about what settings do what and how they effect your final picture but spend a bit of time and you wont be disappointed. the configuration of the buttons on the camera body allows for easy controll and the more you get used to there location the less you will have to trawl through menus to change settings as most can be done while holding one button and turning jog wheel the change setting.
As said before i have had my D50 for around 1 year now and have only a couple of small niggles with the camera, these being if you buy an optional battery grip the camera doesnt have the required conectors for battery grip buttons to work like on the D70 range and above. all you will get is increased battery life. the onboard flash as with a lot of onboard camera flashes isnt great for taking pics over distance in the dark and anyone caught in the pictures taken will tend to overexpose. You can play around with camera setting to sort this but i ended up buying a SB400 speed light so i could tilt the flash to the roof as its quicker and saves you missing great photo opertunities.

nikon sofware that comes with the camera is somewhat limited in its ability to adjust photos but a £50 quid spent on photshop elements 5.0 and youll never have to worry about adjusting pics to get there best.

Summary: great introduction to SLR world with quality and perfromance to match

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