I thought that some people may be interested in my diary of using the D200. I am not going to talk about too many technical aspects of the camera - but I will compare it to my experiences of the D100 and give you my views. I don't pretend to know how to do any test scientifically - these are just my opinions on how the D200 is to work with over the next few days and weeks.

16th December 2005

My wife (Ann) rang me at work at about 10am to confirm that D200 had arrived! This wasn't without incident as it had been delivered to a neighbour...The problem was that I had a Christmas party to go to that night! At about 11pm I finally got my hands on the D200 (with a fully charged battery - courtesy of good thinking on Ann's part) and fell asleep - can't quite hack the pace anymore!!

17th December 2005

In the morning - First impressions was that it was a solid and well made bit of kit. My trusty D100 suddenly looked old fashioned. The three things that drew my attention were the big LCD screen, menu system and the great noise the shutter makes! I took a few shots (well 160 to be honest!) and then sleep got the better of me.

Having used a D100 for the last 3 years I had a few things that I wanted to compare. These were

1) The focusing - especially the predictive focusing on moving subjects

2) The difference 10Mp makes over 6Mp

3) The handling - I loved my D100

4) The noise at high ISO - although as a landscape photographer this wasn't of huge importance to me.

Sam - D200, Nikon 24-85mm Lens - F4.5 / 1/40s / ISO 1000

I got a chance to look at all these 4 things today and first impressions were good. However the difference 10Mp makes was less than I had originally thought. I took a picture below using the same flash, lens and settings

The settings were: ISO 100 (200 on the D100), JPEG Fine (Auto sharpening), Nikon 24-85mm @ F9 / 80mm. I applied levels in photoshop and the same amount of sharpening. I then resampled the D100 in photoshop to the same size.

The full Image taken with the D100 and D200

D200	D100 (Resized in photoshop using Bicubic)

The camera just feels so great. It feels so much more professional than the D100, and heavier for that matter. One thing that I will prove very useful is the RAW + JPEG (at different compressions) mode. Although I am going to have to invest in more storage as you can only fit about 40 images on a 1Gb card for RAW + JPEG / Normal compression.

18th December 2005

I got chance to have a really good play today.  Here are my thoughts;

• What I like about my D200 (after 2 days!)
• The sound the shutter makes – sad – but it sounds so good (and so quiet) – especially at 5fps.
• The 5fps - it is amazing - and the buffer is even more amazing - it will hold 30+ JPEG images.
• The focusing – both in dim light and on moving images
• The LCD screen and menus.  The screen is such an improvement over my old D100.  It is clear and has such high definition.  You can now use it to tell if something is pin sharp
• The CF card holder.  I hated the card holder on my D100 – I always thought it would fall off
• The layout of the majority of the buttons.  The ergonomics are great and well thought out

What I don't like (after 2 days)

• The Mode button – I would prefer a straight dial to change between Shutter / Aperture priority.
• The size of the files created when shooting RAW (uncompressed) + JPG Fine – You can only get 47 on a 1Gb card (With just RAW you can get 60). Obviously this is a huge positive as well as the files have more information!
• It seems to still slightly under expose – not as bad as the D100 did though
• The Auto white balance isn’t as good as it could be - see the image of the forest below...
• What is the point of compressed RAW - isn’t that like a Porsche with a diesel engine?

 I took some pictures of my 16 month old son in the forest today.  I wanted to be able to test the auto focus – and particularly the ability for it to follow a subject.  This was something that my D100 was really poor at.  The D200 did struggle a couple of times but for the whole it performed extremely well.  It was able to keep my son in focus when he was running towards me – no mean feat I can tell you - he is extremely unpredictable!

One thing that the D200 still does is under expose.  However, this isn’t such a big deal now and is obviously better than over exposing.  I took some photos in the forest to see how the auto white balance held up.  The results were similar to my D100 - not great.  It seems to be something that Nikon cameras have problems with as Canon shots that I have seen seem to get it correct most times.

Forest striaght out of the camera	Forest - with colour correction

By the way - I have taken 500 images and the battery is still going (on 35% left)

19th - 21st December

Unfortunately I haven't managed to spend a lot of time with my D200 over the last couple of days. However, I did sit down with it and go through the book and menu systems.

Here are some of the settings that I have changed;

• File no Sequence : ON
• File Naming : D20 - so that I can tell the difference from my D100 images
• RAW Compression: OFF
• Beep: OFF
• Grid Display: ON
• Image Quality: RAW + JPEG Normal (although on get about 45 images on a 1Gb card with this!)Color Space: sRGB
• Self Timer: 5s (I use this instead on a remote when on a tripod...)

I also played with the with the B&W mode - which is hidden away under optimize image with softer and vivid modes - very strange. I have to say that I think that as a capture method this is pointless as you are restricting your options later. Although now there is a good quality 2.5" LCD screen this feature could come in handy as a quick preview and visual aid to composing a B&W shot. In the shot below of Sam I didn't have the control did simulate a green filter and improve skin tones.

Shot with D200 in B&W mode with SB800 flash @ 100 ISO and 24 - 85mm Nikon lens

View week 2 >>>