By William LaMartin, Editor, Tampa PC Users Group
lamartin@tampabay.rr.com

I have wanted a single lens reflex style digital camera every since I saw Ford Bond’s digital Nikon SLR when he gave us a presentation on digital photography in November of 2000, http://www.tpcug.org/newsletter/nl_2000/december2000/minutes200012.htm. Now I have one, the Nikon D100.

This article is not going to be a detailed review of the camera. That has already been done much better than I could do it at any number of web sites. One I particularly like is at http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond100/. What I hope to convey here is a comparison of this camera to my digital Canon G1.

For the past few years, most members have seen me taking photos at the meetings with the Canon G1, a small but upper-end consumer digital camera that is now about 3.5 years old. I did a review of it at http://www.tpcug.org/newsletter/nl_2001/january2001/canong1.htm. I have really worked that little camera, taking around 5,400 images in the past 3 years and four months. From looking at the folders where they are stored, it appears that I have retained 3,870 of them. So I have retained about 72% of the images I took. Furthermore, the average size of a file is 2,056,629 bytes, where the files were saved at the largest size (2048 x 1536 pixels) and with the least compression possible. On a recent trip to New Orleans, I took around 250 photos with the Canon, retaining around 230 of them. And I am happy with most of them.

So, if I am happy with what the G1 produces, why move up? Well, because I am not completely happy. There were just some things the G1 didn’t do well, and I had learned to work around them as best I could. And the fact that it did better than any other comparable digital in its price range that I had seen gave a sort of satisfaction. But every time I took a photo of a house in bright sun and the lawn in front had splotches that appeared totally washed out, or when I tried to photograph a moving object--even a slowly moving trolley car in New Orleans--and I knew that I had to aim a bit ahead of the trolley to be sure that the trolley was captured when the camera decided to actually take the photo after all its calculations, I thought about that better digital. Then there were those photos taken in available light that had some strange colors around the edge or where two walls joined in a room that I knew wouldn’t have such a problem if I had used my film camera.

Finally, I thought of another photography project I wanted to do in the near future which I probably wouldn’t be able to do if I waited more than six months and for which I wanted to use a digital camera, and that made the decision for me to drive over to North Tampa Photography and purchase the D100. It is sold without any lens. However, I can use the lenses I already have for my Nikon film camera, which is the main reason I never even considered the competing Canon digital SLR, which I am sure is a fine camera. A typical Nikon lens will cost you around $500, so you don’t want to have to buy any more of them than necessary.

One surprise was that the camera will not work with my Nikon SB-27 speedlight in Through the Lens Mode (TTL). It will only work that way with two of the newer speedlights made by Nikon. I did get it to work with the SB-27 in auto mode and the camera in manual mode.

The current version of my Canon is the G5 which is a 5 megapixel camera and costs around $520, considerably less than the $900 I paid for my G1. The 6.1 megapixel D100 without a lens costs $1,495, and, as I mentioned, a Nikon Zoom lens can go for around $500. So what do you get by paying an extra $1,500 for the SLR type digital camera and lens? Why, you get better photos!

• They are sharper and cleaner looking.
• The color balance is almost always correct, with no need for modification in a graphics program.
• The camera is ready to snap a photo the instant you turn it on.
• High speed image processing shows you the photo taken in the preview screen almost instantly. Note with a SLR digital, you don’t see the photo in the screen on the camera's back until the photo is taken, since the camera’s mirror is in the way before the photo is snapped.
• This same high speed image processing allows the photo to be taken the instant you press the shutter release (except on some flash shots in my testing), and the camera has a large enough buffer to allow you to take 3 frames per second to a maximum of 7 or 8 photos.
• Focusing is very fast.

These last two items are also what separate the Nikon D100 from the Nikon digitals that cost twice as much again: Faster and longer continuous shooting and the ability to quickly automatically focus large lenses. Think long, heavy telephoto lenses for sports photography. I note that the 24 - 120 mm Nikkor zoom lens I use with the D100 by itself weighs more than my old Canon G1.

That brings up the main disadvantage (other than price) of the digital SLRs--size and weight. I had really come to enjoy the small size of my Canon G1 when compared to my Nikon film camera, which is about the same size as the new D100.

Here are three of my first photos taken with the D100. The top photo is of Wade Herman’s parrot cropped from a larger photo taken with the built-in flash.

The second  photo is of a neighborhood cat on a porch shot with the zoom lens at full extension.

The next photo is a slightly cropped version of a bee taking nectar from a small flower in the alley behind my home. This photo was taken with an AF Micro Nikkor 60mm lens (close-up lens). The other two photos were taken with an AF-S Nikkor 24-120 mm lens.

All three photos have been considerably reduced in size and compressed greatly to make them usable when the newsletter is put at the web site. However, the quality is still there. The bee is only 56 KB, the cat is 86 KB and the parrot is 121 KB. Check out these photos in the online version of the newsletter to see them in color and with a much better rendition.

Another difference between the Canon G1 and the Nikon D100 is that the Canon uses battery power to go from wide angle to zoom. With the D100 and a zoom lens attached, you use your hand to rotate the zoom ring on lens. This is just one of several reasons for the surprisingly long battery life of the D100. It looks like I am out of space, so other observations will have to wait. u