And I am most enthusiastic about the D100 Nikon. Having been committed to this brand for a couple of decades now through a series of bodies from F2, F3, F4, 801, & others, it was a big step to depart from film.

So what is so great about digital?

One obvious advantage is the ability to experiment with a number of shots of the one subject with no added expense, in the hope that there is one top result. A second is the immediate feedback that one has when viewing a photo result. This works well in detecting obvious bloopers such as misaligned horizons etc but is limited as ultimate quality is not readily apparent on the small monitor.

One area I found digital superior is in taking natural light photos inside of churches and other buildings. The digital images are far better than I was ever able to achieve with film.

So is 6 megapixels good enough? So far my answer is yes as I have some beautifully crisp studies and they are coming out better in Powerpoint than scanned photos.

Storage? This bugged me initially and deterred me from going digital but proved to be a no brainer. I travelled with two 512 mb flash cards, and found each capable of about 190 pics at full jpeg resolution (about 2.5 mb a shot). At day's end it was a simple and quick job to download the files into a 30 gb Nixvue Vista, a unit capable of holding up to 11,000 high res digital pics. Once back home the whole set of 7.75 gb downloaded to the computer via firewire in less than 15 minutes!

The slower job is transferring the files into Powerpoint, but it is a far quicker task than scanning in photos. So far I have not needed to manipulate any files using Adobe Photoshop because the metering system on the Nikon has proven to be so effective. However it is something I will look at before printing out any of the better studies.

BTW a big thank you to Canon. The introduction of their rival to the D100 caused Nikon to lower prices just before my purchase. And long may the competition between these two continue to benefit we consumers.

John

Peace at AA

 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - Hornlover 11:20:51 07/29/03 (0)
 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - phlogiston 15:35:14 06/28/03 (3)
 one of our finest mags still uses film not digital - Joe M 18:28:09 07/03/03 (1)

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 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - Hornlover 11:20:51 07/29/03 (0)
 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - phlogiston 15:35:14 06/28/03 (3)
 one of our finest mags still uses film not digital - Joe M 18:28:09 07/03/03 (1)
 Re: one of our finest mags still uses film not digital nt - Sparks1 05:03:15 08/06/03 (0)
 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - phlogiston 16:52:01 06/28/03 (0)
 Congrats John - Adi 14:35:20 06/17/03 (3)
 Re: Congrats John - John C. - Aussie 14:49:38 06/17/03 (2)
 Re: Congrats John - Adi 18:04:36 06/17/03 (1)
 Handling those big digital files - John C. - Aussie 13:39:36 06/19/03 (0)
 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - J. Dager 13:08:21 06/17/03 (2)
 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - John C. - Aussie 13:23:22 06/17/03 (1)
 Re: Extremely pleased I changed to a D100 Nikon digital camera - Bold Eagle 14:58:14 08/08/03 (0)

John

Peace at AA

I tried it in the store a few weeks ago, loved it, but I am over the OVF cameras.

Doesnt D100 offer raw format?

>>The slower job is transferring the files into Powerpoint, but it is a far quicker task than scanning in photos.

What advantages Powerpoint gives you?

I'm putting them into Powerpoint for viewing easily on the computer and on our projector system. Not many will be printed out. A few will be dumbed down with Adobe for email attachments.

Still working out the best way of handling such large files - maybe use the Nixvue as an external drive if I can get a firewire attachment for the notebook. Looks like another hard drive needed on this desktop! I'm upgrading memory to 1 gig. Also investigating a DVD burner but am hesitating on this.

John

Peace at AA

Take a look at Adobe Photoshop Album 1.0 which is specifically created for this purpose. Although like a typical 1.0 software, it is a few rough edges, but still very versatile IMO. YOu can categorize the photos, email and publish them on the web with automated layouts including thumbnails, borders etc, burn VCDs, slideshows etc.

Just yesterday, I burned a test VCD. It was a breeze. Although, I am disappointed with the quality of VCD pics on my HDTV --compared to my EIZO monitor or 950i prints-- I am going to use that feature for my and wifes families in India. I am sure when viewed on Std. Def. monitor they look fabumous. PS Album also allows to put in MP3 background music, which I liked.

Yes, I am also drooling for a DVD-R but they and the media are overpriced right now. Hopefully within a year DVD-Rs prices will comedown to reasonable level.

ON the hard-drive question, Right now I am using a 20Gb partition in the WD 80Gb drive with 8MB cache. Got an extra disk for exclusively photos and videos which is yet to be installed. Before doing that, I need to get an external USB drive for the hard-drive. I already have a 40GB external USB drive, very versatile. Hot plugins and disconnects and portablity features are simply irrestable. This WD drive is extremely fast (faster than any drive I used, thx to the cache) and amazingly quite, you wont even know its running.

Thanks for the tip re Adobe Photoshop Album 1.0 - I'll follow up.

I've rejected a DVD burner for the moment but have what I think is a better alternative. I'm purchasing a firewire card for the HP Xe3 notebook and a 160 gb Maxtor external drive. The advantages of firewire are twofold - it can be hotwire connected and has staggeringly fast download speeds. So I can prepare material on the desktop, save it on the external Maxtor, then plug the Maxtor into the Notebook for slide shows or whatever. The other advantage of the external drive is that it does not have to be connected and whirring around all the time so should have a very long life.

BTW those D100 jpeg files can give humoungous PoerPoint files. About 200 -> a PP file of 440mb!

Interesting times!

John

Peace at AA

I've given some thought to the D-100 as I already have the N-80. The need for a new flash annoys the hell out of me though. So I've given some thought to the Fuji Pro S2 which will use my existing flash gear. Also to the Canon, which nets out about the same even with new lenses. Do you have any thoughts on the one versus the other?

The rest of your system thinking pretty well parallels mine. (portable storage device, a couple of large cards, slide shows on a laptop PC, eventually going to DVD-R, etc.)

Jerry