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I am now into week 3 of my D200 - my diary continued...
31st Dec 2005 - 6th Jan 2006
I haven't managed to spend a lot of time taking pictures in the last week as most of my time has been spent at the hospital with Thomas (who is doing really well and seems to be progressing as would be hoped for a 32 week old premature baby) and spending time with my other son, Sam.
One of the things that I have thought about is what I am going to do with my D100. I had originally thought that I would keep it as a second camera. However, I haven't used it since I got my D200 (apart from some test shots to compare it with the D200) and as I can get about £400 on ebay it seems wasted collecting dust. I suppose there will be an occasion when I want to use it but I can't really justify it and will be putting it up for sale on ebay next week.
I lot of the photos that I have taken this week have been of Sam and Thomas. I have experimented a lot with the continuous shooting at 5fps and the higher ISOs and found them both to be great. As I reported in week 1 the high ISOs are so much better than my earlier Nikon. I am happy shooting at up to ISO 1250 and getting results that I would be happy to print. I haven't used any noise reduction software (apart from experimenting with a trial copy of noise ninja - which did improve the results) but out of the camera results with normal noise reduction are good enough to print at A4.
Sam - D200, Nikon 70-200mm Lens - 200mm F2.8 / 1/320s / ISO 1000
This was taken on JPEG Fine - which is the setting that I use for all my candid shots. I am really pleased with the auto white balance and high ISO results. This was one of a series taken at 5fps and they are all accurately exposed and focused even though Sam starts to run towards me!
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What you can do with the increased resolution is crop your images. I have taken many images in the last three weeks and managed to crop them and still print great A3+ prints. Although I am a great believer in getting the composure correct at the time of capture this does mean that you can correct any errors and still have good quality images
Bird Tree - D200, Nikon 70-200mm Lens - 200mm F5.0 / 1/30s / ISO 100
Grumpy - D200, Nikon 70-200mm Lens - 200mm F2.8 / 1/320s / ISO 500
Both 'Bird Tree' and 'Grumpy' were heavily cropped - to almost 1/4 of the frame and still look good printed at just smaller than A3.
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I have read a lot about the poor view times on the LCD screen. I have to say that I have had no problems - the view times are <1s and once on the screen flicks between images quickly. I also find the interface for viewing very good. One thing that I do find slightly annoying is the difficulty in changing focusing points. Sometimes it works well and you can toggle to the point that you want - however, on a couple of occasions I have struggled to move to the lower point. This has usually happened when I most needed it!
Another thing that has surprised me is the lack of dust on my mirror. I have changed lenses many many times now - sometimes in a hurry with the camera outside in the wind and still can't see any spots on my images. I hope to look at this in more detail next week.
Today I took quite a few pictures with the onboard flash. When I got back home and downloaded them I noticed that I had left the ISO setting to 800 and was amazed by the results! - see below...
Concentrating - D200, Nikon 28-85mm Lens - F5 / 1/60s / ISO 800
This was taken with the onboard flash @ ISO 800 - obviously the noise is less when you use the flash due to the light levels - but this is great news as it means that you can use it as a fill-in for dark indoor shots where you want to keep detail in the background areas.
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Finally - guess what this is! 
Entwined bodies - D200
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