Nikon D40

[cycleman]

Nikon D40, I saw one second hand for £70. Any good? 

[David Martin]

Yes but overpriced at that

Sent from my D2403 using Tapatalk

[cycleman]

Thanks, I will shop around then 

[fuaran]

Is that £70 just for the body, or does it include any lens or other accessories?
From a quick look, you can get a D40 body for £59 from Ffordes, and that will have a warranty etc. http://www.ffordes.co.uk/product/16041313361581

No idea if it's any good as a camera. Depends on what you want to do with it. There's plenty of other old DSLRs available cheaply.

[Samuel D]

The D40X or D60 are a better bet, with a 10-megapixel CCD sensor that produces good results at ISO 100 even by today’s standards. The D40 had a higher base ISO (i.e. one with more noise) and suffered from CCD artefacts in massively overexposed areas (e.g. light sources in the frame).

I still have and use my D60 regularly. In many ways there has been little progress in SLRs since the D60. The new ones have better rear displays and sensors that perform better in extreme conditions, but they are not usefully more responsive, smaller, or lighter. Meanwhile, feature-creep and lost focus have made them considerably harder to use. And despite those new features, useful new features are few and far between. For example, the main thing I miss on my D60 is a built-in GPS receiver, but hardly any new cameras have that anyway.

[T42]

I used a D40 as my "don't care if it gets pinched" camera in Italy in 2009.  Liked it.  Church interiors got a bit muddy in the shadows at 1600 ISO but OK for the web.

Of course I would have been mightily pissed off if the lens had been pinched.

[Samuel D]

What was the lens?

[cycleman]

This one was just the body. I am looking to getting a camera that will have a larger senser than my little Canon sx270hs. I don't have a lot of money to throw at this so something cheap, secondhand seems the way forward. A general /wide angle lens would be interesting to play with as I like taking landscapes while cycling. I will keep my eyes out for a D40X or a D60 

[Arellcat]

The D40 had a higher base ISO (i.e. one with more noise) and suffered from CCD artefacts in massively overexposed areas (e.g. light sources in the frame).

I took it to mean that the photosites on the 6MP sensor were larger than the 10MP version, and thus more sensitive, and thus obviating ISO100.  The D40 metering always seems to favour the darker portions of the frame, so you underexpose in camera by 0.3 or 0.7 stops, and bring up the levels in post-processing.

While I've been looking at the D7100 and D610 and so on, I still like the D40 enough for what I do with it that I've consistently put off spending the three hundred, four hundred or more to upgrade.  My local shop offered me £70 for both camera and lens (and box and everything) as a trade in, about four years ago.

[T42]

While I've been looking at the D7100 and D610 and so on, I still like the D40 enough for what I do with it that I've consistently put off spending the three hundred, four hundred or more to upgrade.  My local shop offered me £70 for both camera and lens (and box and everything) as a trade in, about four years ago.

If I had the €€€ to look at those I'd look at the D500.  If it had been around when I bought my D600 I'd have saved a packet on FF lenses. The D500 has a bunch of dedicated buttons and doesn't have the idiotic mode dial that most lower-range SLRs & compacts waste top-plate space on.

I still have my D40, BTW.  I haven't used it for yonks but it's not worth selling and it's always another camera if I need it.