My big self-gift for the year is my first proper Digital SLR. Back in the long ago days, I had a film SLR, even got paid to take pictures with it for a while.
When digital came around, I held off on buying a decent camera, in hopes that they would eventually make replacement back-frames for my existing camera, so I could upgrade to digital without changing the basic hardware. Well, despite some initial positive press, that market never seemed to come together. In the meantime, I bought a series of mid-range digital point and shoot cameras that did a good enough job. The last one was even waterproof, so I could take it everywhere. But I missed the control and expandability of the SLR.
Tempted by Best Buy’s 18 months no interest deal, I finally settled on the Nikon D90. I got a package deal, with a decent wide-to-zoom lens, and a proper zoom-to-super-zoom lens. I haven’t had a chance yet to do any significant shooting with it, the size and weight are too much for any bag I’ve got currently, and the bag that came with the package, while fitting the body and two lenses inside, does so in an ungainly and annoying way. You can’t store all the items in the bag if any lens is actually attached to the camera, and with my cat and his fur, I hate the idea of having to open and close the body up so often.
It’s odd, how much heavier and bulky the digital cameras are, versus the old school film SLR.
The coolest thing I’ve discovered about the camera so far is the depth of data it adds to the EXIF. Amongst the many bits of data it records and stores with an image is something called “Focal Length In35mm Format”.
So tempted to get the little GPS dongle.
UPDATE: Finally got word back from Nikon tech support, they are aware that months after Snow Leopard was released, they still don’t have a compatible version of their RAW format viewer program, ViewNX. They do have it scheduled for release by the end of January 2010. Strikes me as an annoyingly pathetic effort on their part, but then again, I noticed that some part of their program is still written in PowerPC code, and requires Rosetta installed to run. Sounds like they really don’t give much attention to their software devs outside the camera. I can only hope they show more care with the software inside the camera, though without a way to use the RAW images, it’s all an exercise in futility. If you are thinking of buying a Nikon D90 for someone this year (who has a MAC, and Snow Leopard), don’t bother, they aren’t ready for you yet, and you will only annoy the person you give it to.
UPDATE2: Major points against the Nikon tech support drone “David”, who failed to mention that Apple’s own photo programs have support for the NEF format used by the D90. That’s the difference between quality support, who goes the extra 2 inches, not even a mile, to find a workaround, and the kind of crap support you get from Nikon, where they just want to find the quickest way to close out your question, regardless of how helpful the answer is to fixing the problem. Another reason not to buy from Nikon this year.