Matt_from_England

With some of the fine photographs being displayed recently I have finally decided to move over from film to digital and will be buying the Nikon D200 with Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF. I'll be using a TC-14E II 1.4x teleconverter with it which with the 1.5x of the Nikon should give max focal length of 420mm if I've done my maths right with only a 1 stop loss. I think that'll give me the versatility I need. With regard to landscape shots I'll stick with my trusted and battered FM2n and its 28mm F2.8 using Fujia Velvia slide and scan them later.

Now just got to get hold of the Nikon as it seems to be on waiting lists everywhere.

Is anyone else preparing a digital upgrade soon and if so will you choose Canon over Nikon? (BTW not a troll but with my planned September trip playing on my mind I want something that I can be used to long before I go.)

Matt

divewop

Matt-
Before you buy the D200, read this article that Sundowner, another Fodorite alerted me to:

http://www.nikoncafe.com/vforums/showthread.php?t=60059

I am also going to get the D200 and use that as my 2nd body back-up (instead of my D70) and when I don't want to lug around my D2X.

It does look like a great camera and I'm anxious to get my hands on it. After reading this article, I think I will wait a couple more months for the kinks to be worked out and also wait until the prices stablize and/or come down.

Matt_from_England

Thanks Divewop, (and for your earlier response to a Nikon ?)

It's that last comment that the bodies will come through in March which nerves me for what if it is not okay still? It seems from those comments that Nikon put it out in order to undercut the 5D but has suffered QC as a result. I think like you too will I wait to see what pans out and in the meantime keep pushing the old girl.

BTW what did you think to the idea of getting the 80-200 F2.8 with tc-14 over the other mentioned zoon lens. I am still a little concerned about the focus speed of the 80-400mm. But then perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. I cannot claim to be a pro photographer at all.

Thanks for your help, take care,

Matt

jasher

Hi Matt,

I'm using a Canon rather than a Nikon, but I believe your maths are correct for the lens combination (70-200 + 1.4x TC = 420mm equivalent). I recently bought a 20D, but Canon are supposed to be coming out with a new body at the end of this month so I may buy that one as my second body.

Cheers,
Julian

divewop

Matt-
I've been quite happy with my 80-400, although the focus speed is a little slow particularly when trying to photograph fast moving objects. But that doesn't occur too much to give me reason to dislike the lens.
Other than that, it's great for close-ups. Especially with the digital cameras.
It's been my main lens on my trips to Africa, even photographing the gorillas at close range. People smirked when they saw the lens I used there but because of the 80-400, I got some terrific shots of them.

However, the lens combined w/ the D2X makes for one heavy load. Whew!

As Julian pointed out, the teleconverters on your 70-200 should work fine.

There are many D200's on the market that haven't had the problems per the article, but as with any new camera purchase, I always like to wait till the furor dies down and let others test the waters first. That way, I learn the good, bad and ugly and make my decisions when the waters have calmed.

cary999

I too am planning to get the D200 this spring. The banding thing probably has now finally been sorted out and will shortly no longer be a worry. We'll know in a month or so. I'm also waiting for dpreview.com of the D200. I plan to go with the 18-200VR lense and just "glue" it on the body. But also need to hear more about this lense. I do not plan on using a teleconverter. Isn't the loss of resolution directly proportional to the magnification (say 1.4) of the TC? If so, why not just crop the 300mm shot to look like 500mm? Cropping very easy to do and gives you a lot of leeway in composing the image. And with the 10mpixels of the D200 that would leave enough for a good large print. AND, I just can't wait to get back to using an SLR with that wonderful optical viewfinder.
regards - tom

Kavey

Matt, I have been a (film) SLR user since I was 11 (well over 20 years ago) and was always a Minolta girl.

When I first switched to a digital SLR Minolta hadn't released one yet and I knew that even if they finally did they had left it too late to enter a market already dominated by Canon and Nikon.

I was torn between the two brands. With my budget I was choosing between the Nikon D70 and the Canon 10D. Once I held them in my hand it came down to the D70 which we bought 2 years ago. Around then my husband caught the photography bug more seriously too.

In general we were happy with it but we did have autofocus freeze problems using the longer lens which were very frustrating when shooting fleeting wildlife scenes. We thought it was because our long lens was a cheap, second hand one but on meeting and getting to know a couple of pro photographers who were both shooting Nikon we started wondering if that was the case. One said he'd encountered the same problem (intermittently) on both film and SLR Nikons, both cheap and expensive lenses. The other said that as soon as his kit next wore out (it has a hard life) he'd be switching to Canon! This gave us a lot of food for though, so too did the fact that many friends have Canon and were able to have fun swapping lenses etc. which we couldn't do.

When we bought a second DSLR we decided we'd get a Canon so we could more accurately get a feel for them both and after using both we decided to go with Canon longterm. Image quality isn't better, and I actually prefer the layout of buttons etc on the Nikon (especially the on/ off switch) but we felt that there were more options for different lenses with Canon and more opportunity to buy second hand ones at great prices because so many more people are with Canon.

We have very recently sold our D70 and lenses, 2 years old, for about 2/3 of the original price we paid for them!

Honestly, I think you'll actually be happy with whichever system you buy into - both produce great cameras, lenses and images - it's up to the photographer to do the rest!

Matt_from_England

Okay so an update to an old thread: I had been considering the D200, having been a Nikon user of old with my FM2n and various manual focus lenses. But I've recently come into possesion of a mint and boxed Canon EOS 1N HS, (Film) body which was a highly rated professional model from the mid 90s with super fast focusing and frame advance. So now it is to lenses and I will be purchasing the 70-200 F4 L and also the 100 - 400 F4 - 5.6, the latter will be sitting on the digital and so do I wonder which Canon Digital body to buy. Ideally it will be the new 30D but that offers no improvement in resolution over the 20D - and the 5D has full frame so cannot extend the focal length of the bigger zoom. Hence thinking of the 30d which would give 70-200 on the film and then 160 - 620 (ish) on the digital pretty much covering the full range needed for wildlife.

A hefty investment in terms of the 2 lenses and digital body, perhaps I should wait a little for canon to bring out a 10mp body to fit inbetween the 30d and 5D and hope it is not full frame.

Thanks for everyone's advice in this matter,

Matt