After losing perhaps a dozen auctions I succeeded in acquiring a Nikon D200 digital camera body on eBay, which I was able to pick up in person in Muncie, IN (USA) on the way to visit family in Lafayette.. The particular unit was relatively heavily used with about 90,000 shots taken…rated by Nikon for about 200,000.
Why did I want an “old” camera? It turns out that the first few Nikon digital models were designed to still work with the older manual lenses, and I had a whole set of nice ones from my film camera days…f55 1:1.2…f135 1:2.8…f19 1:3.8…f28-200 1:3.9-5.6…f500 1:1:8. Most of those lenses are easily duplicated in magnification by almost any cheap digital camera today, but the large apertures…up to 1:1.2…and the wide angle…f19…are the things that are not readily obtained on fixed-lens cameras. In particular the 1.2 allows me to take a picture of a person in front of a busy background by blurring out the background and keeping the subject in sharp focus. Most digital cameras have such sensitive sensors that they don’t need large apertures to gather enough light at hand-held shutter speeds. So the depth of field stays large…sharp focus from 6′ to infinity! The casual user WANTS that sharp-all-over effect so it is no problem for the manufacturer to use cheaper smaller aperture lenses.
So, now I hope to begin producing more pictures with selective focus.
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