WOW! Digital BLISS!

I bought this camera from an online vendor last year in May. The deal sounded too good to be true ... and it was. Turns out he vendor was shady and the $4000 in extras turned out the be about $175 in extras. I got the camera body, 18-55mm lense, Tamron telephoto, wide angle, hard case, soft case, full tripod, mini pocket sized tripod, 4Gb memory, cleaning kit, card reader, cables, charger, battery all for about $900 with shipping. The seller is banned from the selling website for many uphappy customers. Anywho, I am more than pleased with the camera that I got.

You will find tons of information online about all the tech specs on this camera so I won't elaborate on those but I will give you and idea about what it is like using it. If you go to nikon.com you will find a short video of what they did to test market this camera. They gave out a bunch of cameras for your every day joe and jane to use and asked them to report to Nikon their experiences. Watch the video and you'll understand.

The camera came with 18-55mm lense (among other extras in the package I chose) with autofocus feature which is very easy to use. Simply turn the camera on, align your target into the view finder, press the capture button half way to allow it to calculate light, speed, color, motion and distance. Once it's ready, it will beep (literally less than half second) and shoot. Done! This camera and lense shoot crisp colorful photos that even in the hands of a novice, will surprise everyone with it's professional results. Light weight, well balanced and ergonomically postioned buttons make this camera fun, practical and easy to use. Automatic everything. It has a sleep feature so you don't lose battery power forgetting to leave it on while you are finding your next target. Just turn the camera on, when not in use it powers down and you just need to press the shoot button and within about two seconds it's ready to use. It also shoots about as fast as I can press the button but has a shoot in series feature which allows for autoadvance shots (like when shooting sports or other action shots). Just click and it shoots frame after frame after frame until you get tired!

If automatic is not your thing, that is you like to manipulate your photos like the old SLR cameras, the D40X allows for that too. Lots of easy to use programs allow you to turn off the automatic features and control ISO, aperture, speed etc. You can even edit on the camera and shoot with different effects (filters etc).

I have two 2Gb memory cards and when I took my trip to Italy this February, I took more than 2400 photos and used only one card (still had room for a few). I took almost two hundred photos a day (deleted quite a few) and amazed all my friends and family with the things I saw. I even tried to get the "artisitc" shots playing with shadows, aperature and speed settings and must say it is so much easier to use this D40X than my 1969 Nikomat which is fully manual and about five times the weight (without the lense).

I also purchased a Tamron 100-300mm telephoto lense. It is not automatic so I have to manually focus my subjects. However, the resolution of the photos, even at low resolution setting (higher resolutions eat up memory so you will not be able to shoot as many photos) the pictures are crisp, bright and full of life and color. Telephoto shots were amazing. I took shots of valleys, houses and churches on hilltops across the mountains ... simply amazing results.

Best investment I ever made. I had a hard time with getting it because I chose to buy online and got a shady vendor, however that reflects nothing on the product. I think for the money, it's a great camera and has more features and is more fun to use than the Canon Rebel which is it's main competitor and what I was considering to buy before I saw the D40X.

OH! The Nikon will also retro fit my old lenses from my other camera. I will not be able to use the autofocus features because the old lenses don't have built in motors and the contacts are positioned differently, however I am still able to take pictures manually - and am able to store them digitally. Just check with your sales person or call Nikon directly if you have older Nikon equipment and want to see if it is cross utilizable.

I love it and wish I could afford to buy one for everyone I know! Memories and good times would truly last forever!