Glenn Wolsey said:
I'm just about ready to purchase a new digital camera, one that will be suitable for landscape shots, close up macro shots, and the occasional aircraft and sport shots.
I have had a look at the Nikon D200 online today and it looks like a great camera. Does anyone have it, or can anyone advise me if its worth purchasing for my needs?
It would behoove you to actually handle the camera in a local camera shop, play with the various controls, try a couple of lenses on it, before purchasing, rather than basing your purchasing decision on features you read about online. Don't ever just order a camera blindly without ever actually handling it. Yes, the D200 is a great camera (well worth the wait that many of us had during the many months of rumors) -- but is it something you really NEED for your first DSLR? What is your photographic experience to date? Do you have lenses already or would you be starting out fresh? Landscape shots, close-up macros, aircraft and sports shots all are done best by different lenses, not just one lens.
Assuming you've got some kind of camera already, do you find that in post-processing you are doing a lot of cropping? Are you intending to make large prints, 11 x 17 or poster-sized? Shooting for commercial ventures? I ask this because that's when the extra megapixels would come in handy, but definitely 6 - 8 MP are quite sufficient in a DSLR. If you're shooting in such a way that you need to pretty heavily crop in order to get the results you want, that suggests that it's not more megapixels you need, it's more instruction in the photographic process.
Buying a camera body based on the number of megapixels it has or all the bells and whistles it offers is not the wisest thing to do. Sure, buying one camera body over another or one brand over another will offer some advantages/disadvantages, but for the most part, you can do quite nicely with any of the current DSLR camera bodies on the market today. I'll repeat: 6 - 8 megapixels are plenty.
I would venture to guess that most people who have bought or who will be buying the D200 are coming from experience with the D70 or the D100, rather than having the D200 as their first DSLR. It seems that for most people who are stepping into using a DSLR for the first time, camera bodies such as the D50, D70, D70s in the Nikon line or the Digital Rebels in the Canon line (and other models, too, but can't remember those just off the top of my head since I'm not a Canon user) are the way to go....
The lenses are far more important than the camera body. It might be a much better use of your money to first buy a D50 or D70s (possibly even be able to pick up a D70 somewhere fairly inexpensively now that they're discontinued) and then put the balance of your funds into good lenses. You want to do macro? Great, use some money to get a nice macro lens. You want to do sports photography? Then you'll be looking at plunking down big bucks for a fairly fast tele lens. In purchasing the D50 or D70s now and putting your money into good lenses to use with that camera body, you'll be investing in the future, too, as of course when you later purchase the D200 or whatever the next model out of the pipeline is, you've still got those good lenses which can be used on it.
When I bought my D70 I began to purchase and use lenses for it and now that I've got the D200, those same lenses are doing a fine job on that new camera body. Having the right lenses for specific photographic situations is far more important in the long run than how many megapixels the camera body has.
Those extra megapixels make a difference in resolution, yes, but they also mean that you are going to have signficantly larger file sizes, both on the memory card (meaning the need to purchase larger and more expensive CF cards) and in the computer. Better be sure if you do go with a D200 that you've got the space in your hard drive and that you've got a good plan for backing up the images (ie, DVDs, external hard drive, etc.).
Will you be using the camera to the extent that you can justify the costs of a D200 over a D70s or a D50? That is, are you intending to use it for fine art projects or for photojournalism projects (school newspaper), or for publication either in print or on the web?
Before making any purchase, (1) read reviews and user comments, (2) go to the local camera shop and actually handle the different camera bodies and lenses and (3) take a look at your earlier photography projects and assess how a DSLR will make a difference for you and then assess which features are the most important to you and which lenses would be the most likely to help you achieve your creative potential.
Only after all that, then fork over the money for a new camera body and lens(es)....
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