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I am looking at getting my fist DSLR
harvey norman have nikon D40 atm for $498 which I was pretty keen on
but have found this one near where I live its a D70s
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Nikon-D70s-SLR-D ... 638Q2em144

I will mostly taking pics cars
cheers steve

I would say go with the Nikon D40 the D70 is a great camera but the lens included is a 70-300mm which is not the most useful lens.

so the D40 is a reasonable camera

D40 is a great camera from what I have observed. The D70(s) is also a fantastic camera, this observation from personal use. The technology from the D40 is further advanced compared to the D70. Everything has it's price.

ok cheers
I went and bought the D40 today
now I have to figure out how to use it LOL

anyway off to the nats tomorrow to give it a work out

Don't forget that the D40 cannot autofocus with older lenses that require a screw-drive AF. The D70 can drive those.

Yi-P wrote:Don't forget that the D40 cannot autofocus with older lenses that require a screw-drive AF. The D70 can drive those.

how do you do that

GMMAD wrote:

Yi-P wrote:Don't forget that the D40 cannot autofocus with older lenses that require a screw-drive AF. The D70 can drive those.

how do you do that

You don't have to do anything. The camera does it all.

One of the things they took out of the D40 (that was in the D70s) was a motor to drive the autofocus mechanism. This means that AF lenses that do not have a motor built in will NOT autofocus with the D40, but will with the D70.
AF-S lenses have a motor built in, so will autofocus with either camera.

The saddest part of this is that you can't use the brilliant 85/1.4 Unless you set the focus yourself of course

Mr Darcy wrote:

GMMAD wrote:

Yi-P wrote:Don't forget that the D40 cannot autofocus with older lenses that require a screw-drive AF. The D70 can drive those.

how do you do that

....

The saddest part of this is that you can't use the brilliant 85/1.4 Unless you set the focus yourself of course

It is more about that you can't use AF with the well priced and great quality nikon lenses. Any pre AF-I and AF-S lenses WILL NOT focus with the D40, even if the lens claims to be so. Reason as explained above, the D40 will not have a AF motor to drive the AF mechanism in those lenses.

Not just the 85/1.4, also the 50/1.8, 50/1.4 will also fall behind as they are really well reasonably priced lenses with the quality they produce.

can the D40's built in flash function as commander for off camera flashes?

Rex,

Which off-camera flash?

What does the manual say? There should be a table of compatible Nikon flash units, and if you can dial down the power and turn off the pre-flash (I don't don't know how much of this functionality has been excluded from the D40's design parameters because of its place in the market), then you should be able to drive any flash that has an optical trigger.

Again, all of this detail should be in the manual. Nikon's camera manuals are excellent documents, btw, so you should take some time to read your copy.

rex wrote:can the D40's built in flash function as commander for off camera flashes?

Not according to the manual. It appears it only has TTL and Manual as options for the built-in flash. Unlike my D300 which has TTL, Manual, Repeating and Commander Mode.

The D40 is compatible with Nikon Speedlights (SB400/600/800/900) BUT the pop up flash cannot act as a wireless commander unit to control the flashes off the camera, you will need to invest in a Nikon SB-800/900 or a SU-800 to be able to do that with a Nikon D40.

aim54x wrote:The D40 is compatible with Nikon Speedlights (SB400/600/800/900) BUT the pop up flash cannot act as a wireless commander unit to control the flashes off the camera, you will need to invest in a Nikon SB-800/900 or a SU-800 to be able to do that with a Nikon D40.

That is another extra that comes from the D70... It can control 1 group of remote flashes.

The solution to a D40 would either be an extra SB800 or SU800 on top of it as a commander. The only way that the D40 can drive other flashes using its built-in flash, is by manual optical flash sync.