The Nikon D40 is a 6-mega pixel camera with a 2.5-inch LCD screen. Although the Nikon D40 only offers 6-mega pixels, it’s been receiving great reviews. One user rated it 10 out of 10 saying “A wonderful camera…You will not be disappointed!”. Cnet has reviewed the D40 and writes: “Following recent trends in entry-level

dSLRs, Nikon dropped the second status LCD on top of the camera in favor of a more hands-on role for the 2.5-inch LCD on the back. A single button press brings up a display of all your current settings; a second press allows you to navigate and change those settings using the four-way-plus-OK navigation switch and command dial. If you’re used to shooting with a snapshot camera, it will feel very familiar; if you’re accustomed to more streamlined combinations of buttons and dials, it can feel a bit clunky. For instance, in aperture-priority mode, you can change the aperture only via the command dial; to change the shutter speed, you must go through the aforementioned process. Nikon does provide an Fn button to which you can assign button-plus-dial access to image size/quality, ISO sensitivity, white balance, or drive mode, but I just hate it when manufacturers force me to choose an arbitrarily most-important setting from among several important ones.”

“In most respects, the D40 provides the features of a typical budget dSLR. Its 6-megapixel resolution is on the low side for a camera introduced this year, but my test photos stood up to 13×19 prints and could probably have been pushed a bit larger. However, there were times when I think a higher-resolution sensor might have been able to resolve details a bit better–details such as a cat’s fur, for example. The camera supports sensitivity levels from ISO 200 to ISO 1,600, plus a HI 1 level which equals about ISO 3,200. The lens’s slowish f/3.5-to-f/5.6 aperture narrows your exposure options, however. Other shooting options include three autofocus types (single point, dynamic area, and closest subject) and methods (continuous, single shot, and predictive), shutter speeds from 3 to 1/4,000 second as well as bulb, flash, and exposure compensation in 1/3-stop increments, and three metering modes (spot, center-weighted, and matrix). If you plan on shooting raw, make sure to budget $150 for Nikon’s Capture NX software; the bundled Picture Project software is insufficient.

Shutter lag and autofocus speed pop up as the D40’s biggest weaknesses. It wakes up fast–0.3 second and you’re good to go. But its shutter lag in good light is an almost embarrassing (for a dSLR) 0.7 second, and it more than doubles in dim light to 1.6 seconds. I frequently missed shots because of it. The autofocus system works fine for small changes–the subject taking a step, or refocusing on something nearby–but when switching from a far subject to a near subject or vice versa, it takes a perceptibly long second or two to lock. ”

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