Nikonists (or maybe Nikonians...?) ahoy!

I bumped into a cheap Nikon lens, the now discontinued 28-80 mm AF 3.3 - 5.6 G, on the eBay the other day and as I'm in need of a simple allround zoom for my D70 I threw in a bid.

I became the owner of the lens above for EUR 41,50 and when it arrived it was unused in the original box!

I mounted it on my D70 yesterday evening and though it was a little rainy I went out in the backyard and fired some shots:

The pictures are shot in mediocre light late in the evening at ISO 640, White Balance at auto, aperture preference, aperture set at  f6.3, tweaked only in camera, using my preferred settings regarding sharpness, color and contrast, no noise reduction applied.
The colors I got with this combination of lens and camera are as close to what i got 30 years ago shooting Fujichrome 100 slide film with my Nikkormat Ft2 and Nikkor 50mm 2.0

I must say I'm a little amazed what a second hand 6 Mpix D70 combined with a EUR 41,5 (USD 50 ) lens can do. Sorry D40, D60 and D3000 users, this lens does not work in AF mode, only manual focus on those cameras, but everybody else, go and get it if you find one!

Well it is as plastic as plastic can be and weighs nothing but it is sharp, good colors and fast AF.
I call it a bargain, the best I ever had... :)

Hans

I have to confess...

...that I got carried away by Ingelas new Nikon D3000 and made up my mind to get my own DSLR and refresh some of my old knowledge of the art of photography and upgrade it to include digital photography.
I started to google around and search eBay for something cheap and nice to suit my wallet. The brand was of course already set because of the Nikon D3000 and my first impression was that a D40 would be the thing to get because of the 6 Mpix sensor with big pixels, but much to my surprise I found that D40:s are still quite expensive (seems to be kind of "cult" camera nowadays...) though it is not in Nikons program of products anymore. That added to the fact that the autofocusing and measuring system in D40 is rather simple my attention was turned towards the D50 and D70 series of cameras, sporting the same 6 Mpix sensor but a better and more versatile metering system and as a big advantage, the possibility to use the older fullformat Nikon AF-lenses without motor. You can only use AF-S lenses with own built-in motors with the D40, D60, D3000 and D5000.
Taking into the comparition that the D50 is just a "crippled" and cheaper version of D70 that was concocted to fill in at the consumer starter level some years ago before the D40, my opinion was clear, a D70 or D70s  it has to be! As my son, Markus, owns a D70s since some years ago, and have praised the functionality of that camera, I stared to search the web.
I soon found a good looking D70 body (with the D70s software), fired just in excess of 9000 times, just in the middle of my expected price range so I threw a bid on that and much to my surprise I won the auction.
The camera arrived last Monday and it really was in nearly mint condition. No signs of use other than the info in the EXIF-file that the shutter had been fired less than 10000 times.
It works like a charm though it is of course bigger and heavier than the D3000 but it fits like a glove in my hands.
The only drawback is a rather small screen but you get used to it...:) That is a small price to pay when it was about half the price of the D3000!
And yes, Ingela had to be compensated with another toy that is most permanently sitting on the D3000 now, the new 35 mm f:1.8 AF-S DX from Nikon.:) If you buy this lens you will most probably use it all the time.
You can then really forget about using your flash indoors.

Last Friday night we spent the evening in the sofa with some Glühwein, lit some candles and I took some pictures with my new toy:

Yeah, it is a little noisy but it is shot in candlelight at ISO 1600 without tripod :)

Looks warm and cosy, doesn´t it? But the morning after we woke up in a landscape like this:

Seems that the winter hit us once again but today, Sunday, it is nearly gone again.