Nikon - D200 Digital Camera Review

The Nikon D200 is more camera than I need. It is my wife's camera and we got it for her about a year ago. I've had many opportunities to use it and there is no question that it takes pictures of wonderful quality.

What It Is

The Nikon D200 is a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera body, and it can be bought without a lens, which is how we purchased it. We fitted it with an inexpensive 3x zoom lens and a much more expensive 11x zoom lens, both from Nikon and made to work with the D200. The camera has 10 megapixels of resolution but this only scratches the surface of the camera's image quality -- the D200 handles light and dark areas of the screen far better than any compact digital camera I've used, and I've used several.

As an SLR camera, it has an optical viewfinder that is used to frame and focus the image. The 2.5-inch LCD screen on the back of the camera can not be used to frame and focus images, although it can be used to review the images that you shot. To focus a shot, press the shutter button halfway, and the lens quickly focuses and the camera makes a soft beep. If for some reason the lens did not focus properly, you can focus the lens manually by rotating a ring on the lens. Zooming is also done manually, again by rotating a ring on the lens.

The image sensor on the lens is smaller than a frame of 35mm film, so the focal length of the lenses needs to be multiplied by 1.5 to give it numbers comparable to 35mm SLR lenses. For example, the big lens I have is an 18-200 zoom lens. Multiplying by 1.5 gives 27-300, which is the lens' equivalent as a 35mm lens. In other words, this lens can go from a fairly wide 27mm focal length to a decent telephoto of 300mm. The lens is well-matched with the camera, and it includes an effective anti-vibration feature that works well.

The Nikon D200 uses a proprietary battery and CompactFlash memory chips. Replacement batteries are expensive (more than $50) and CompactFlash seems to be on the way out as a preferred memory format. However, CompactFlash chips are still being made and commonly available -- a lot of cameras out there use them.

The D200 can be set to save images in RAW or JPEG formats. JPEG from the D200 looks better than any other camera I've seen, but RAW is even better. RAW lets you adjust images with all the data from the camera's image sensor, without any compression; JPEG images are always compressed and have some form of image degradation. We use RAW exclusively and can get around 250 images on a 4 GB chip.

This is a heavy camera, particularly with the big lens that we have. My wife got a wide padded neck strap for it; otherwise, carrying the camera was too painful for her.

We paid around $1,600 for the D200 camera body and another $750 for the 18-200 lens. This is not the cheapest SLR camera out there, not by a long shot.

How Does It Work?

As I said earlier, the D200 takes the best pictures I've seen with a digital SLR. Battery life is exceptional, lasting for more than 1,000 shots. The pop-up flash works very well and has good reach. The D200 lets you quickly adjust everything related to the image, including sensitivity (ISO), shutter speed, iris aperture and flash strength. Zooming is manual but it is quick and precise. The image through the optical viewfinder is sparkling clear, and it is easy to use it for manual focusing.

On the downside, the D200 is heavy. However, its heft feels professional and confidence-inspiring. My wife doesn't complain about carrying the D200 around all day but I know she feels it. I prefer to use a smaller, lighter camera that I can prepare and shoot more quickly, and my current fave is the Canon G7. But the image quality from the Nikon D200 blows the G7 off the Photoshop screen, despite the fact that both are 10-megapixel cameras.

After a year of shooting and many thousands of pictures, the D200 is still working and looking good. The camera is rugged.

Summary

If I like the D200 so much, why give it just four stars? Because it is expensive and it is heavy, and those both knock the camera back a bit. For the $2,350 we paid for the D200 and its lens, we expected the level of picture quality that we get. However, it turned out to be somewhat heavier than we expected. If you get this camera, look forward to a good workout carrying it around.

I recommend the Nikon D200. It is an excellent digital SLR camera.