Nikon D50

Nikon D50

Review, thoughts, opinions and how to get the best out of this camera by Jason Buchanan

I have read with great interest the various reviews about the Nikon D50 before and after it was released. It's amazing how many different takes there are about this camera when compared to the Nikon D70 and Nikon D70s - and these three cameras are essentially identical.

There are a zillion pages out there that can be found if you want a comparison of the D50, D70 and D70s - a simple Google search for "Nikon D50 vs. D70s" will reveal more than you could ever want to read. I don't intend to make this page a comparison but rather hope to dispell the rumors as to which is better than the other. Only the software inside the camera is different.

I have had Nikon cameras for years and I have a stockpile of various lenses so the main attraction to the Nikon digital SLR was that I could use the lenses that I already own without having to start all over. The other reason for purchsing the D50 is that I just happen to like Nikon because I never liked Canon. So the first place I started looking for Nikon digital cameras was through Google searches and immediately detected the chaos of reviews by various individuals and magazines. The individuals had varying opinions but the magazines raved on about the superiority of the D70s. I finally opted for the D50 for reasons I will discuss further down the page but when I was ready to shell out the money I discovered that the D50 camera body is nowhere to be found except for the large online retailers like Amazon, B&H, Adorama, etc. When I called the local Ritz Camera stores one guy went so far as to tell me that the D70 was a so much better camera than the D50 that i'd be crazy not to buy it. I made the mistake of visiting a different Ritz Camera store and had to listen to the guy go on and on about the extended warranty that I was turned off by the monotonous drone about how important it is, even though I had told the guy that the majority of my Nikon equipment was purchased as Grey Market imports from B&H that had only the warranty that B&H offers (which is probably better than Nikon's anyway). I eventually wound up buying the camera from Amazon and saved myself paying sales tax to Massachusetts.

Okay, so why the D50 instead of D70s?

Mainly because the D70s is not a better camera than the D50 - it's a different camera for a different kind of consumer. The D50 will produce ".JPG" JPEG files that you can send to friends and family without the need for Photoshop to clean them up and adjust the color levels. The D70 and D70s force you to manually fiddle with each image because the images it creates have a strange color balance that tend to have a greenish cast, where the D50 images are nearly identical to the scene - isn't that the idea behind general photography? This isn't to say that every picture you take with the D70/D70s will be oddly colored but with the two cameras side by side the D50 wins every time for being the most accurate to the scene.

To the credit of the D70s, the D70s can produce slightly sharper JPEG images at the expense of edge rolloff (a faint white "bump" along the edge of high contrast objects). But even with this additional sharpness I still don't care for the color imbalance between the original scene and the JPEG that is written to the SD memory card so it's a moot point to me. If you shoot the image in RAW mode you'll have the same image to work with since no processing takes place in RAW mode.

The D50 has a faster USB (USB 2.0) port than the D70s which can make life less stressful if you have a 1GB memory card. The Sandisk 1GB Extreme III SD card is the one to buy - your local store probably won't sell it but it's worth the effort to buy one online somewhere as the time to write the image is greatly reduced.

The D50 is lighter and arguably more easy to carry and handle. A big, heavy camera may look cool but it is more difficult to hold steady and helps you take blurry shots. I had an F5 for a while but hated it because it was too heavy and muscle fatigue could set in quickly. I have taken very sharp pictures with my F90x at 1/8th second exposure but only because it is nice and light. The Nikon D2X is a similar form factor to the F5 but I still wouldn't buy one due to the weight. Three years from now when the quality of the D2X is in a camera the size of a D50 i'll upgrade.

The D50 does not have the much-touted manual white balance control like the D70s. I have not had a situation where I would need it (or have the time to flip through menus to adjust it), however if you shoot RAW you would do this in Photoshop anyway. Even when producing JPEG images you can go a long way with Photoshop instead of risking missing a shot while twiddling knobs. Nature photography shooters would probably have a need for this but again, I would suspect they would use RAW mode with Photoshop CS2 to post-process.

Regardless of what camera you choose, Photoshop always helps produce an optimal image.

Enough about the comparisons - now the D50.

How to get the best "film-looking" pictures from the D50

Don't use the AUTO mode. You can get adequate-looking digital photos out of the camera using AUTO but they won't look like film.

Always use Fine / Large image sizes. Yes, I have read the stories about guys who got shots because they saved the memory on their cards and had enough room only because they lowered the picture quality. To me that is just bad planning given how CHEAP memory cards are. Normal and Basic image quality modes suffer when used at their native resolution. I wouldn't recommend printing Basic / Large images beyond 5x7, nor would I recommend printing Normal / Large images beyond 8x10. If you are cramped for space, buy a larger memory card. If you are cramped for space with your existing large memory card, buy another large memory card. Why spend thousands of dollars on your camera and lens only to choke it down to low quality for the sake of saving some space on your memory card? Memory is cheap - buy lots of it.

Fuji Provia and Velvia, and Kodak E100S slide film are the only color films I ever thought were worth putting in a camera - that's what I want my images to look like. The D50 can get VERY close to Provia by simply changing the Optimize Image Color Saturation option (page 77 in Nikon D50 manual) to "Enhanced" and always with Large/Fine image size and quality. You have to use one of the P S A M modes for these options to be available in the menus. In AUTO mode the options are "grayed out" and unavailable. Flesh tones can get a little muddy with the saturation on "Enhanced" (sometimes, not always) so take a few test shots of your subjects and adjust if necessary. Enhanced mode always looks great for outdoor images.

I prefer the Auto Sharpness mode as opposed to increasing the sharpness parameter. Perhaps using the Normal value instead of Auto would be a better choice to force the image processor to always process the image the same way but so far, Auto Sharpness has produced nice, crisp images.

Lenses

There are two different schools of thought when it comes to lenses for SLR cameras: expensive lenses that produce really nice shots and less expensive lenses that produce shots as nice as any non-SLR digital camera, and the less expensive lenses will almost always produce a pleasing image.

The D50 kit lens is a new design specifically built for their new digital SLRs. The new AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED lens is a very nice choice that will meet almost anyone's needs. At 18mm the resulting image is about as wide as most people would want, and at 55mm it's nearly as telephoto as most people would want. Although you might find imperfections with this lens mounted on a film camera a 6.1 megapixel camera cannot consume all the photons that it ensnares. To improve over this lens you will need to spend around $1000 to get a zoom lens that will make a dramatic improvement in overall image quality and versatility.

If you don't have any Nikon lenses, be sure to buy the D50 kit with the 18-55m lens.

Now the elitist and highly-opinionated portion about lenses.

I'm making a bad blanket statement but just about every zoom lens that sells for less than $1000 has some kind of flaw (or flaws) that are too much for me to handle. I choose fixed focal length lenses because they suffer almost none of the problems discussed below. Fixed focal length lenses have the disadvantage that you have to carry around a bag full of lenses and run the risk of getting dirt into your camera body - for Digital SLRs you should not attempt to clean the CCD sensor at home - send it to Nikon.

Typical problems with cheap zoom lenses:

Loss of sharpness, or not as sharp
Pincushioning - the image appears to be pulled inwards toward the center
Barrel Distortion - the image appears to be pushed outwards from the center
Light falloff and vignetting - loss of illumination near the corners and sides of the image making the center appear to be brighter
Chromatic Aberration - edges of strongly contrasting objects have a red and blue tint along the edge. The shadows on the boards of a brightly-lit picket fence tend to show this at its worst.

Cheap zoom lenses also suffer from distortion (pincushion and barrel) and light falloff, where their more expensive counterparts at $1000 typically do not. Cheap zoom lenses have a tendency to lose a lot of sharpness as you zoom in to their maximum focal length. The $140 70-300mm f/4-5.6G is a great lens for anyone but it will get a little soft as you get closer to 300mm - is this a big problem? Probably not for most people since most of the blurry shots that you get are due to not having a tripod to stabilize the camera. The built-in softness will contribute to a more pleasing portrait like the softness that is added in by your professional photographer using his $900 lens.

A fixed length lens is optimized to produce the best possible image at its given focal length. Light, sharpness and aesthetic appearance are as good as can be. But as mentioned above you have to take the lens off the camera (exposing very delicate parts to dirt) and carry numerous lenses. Plus they're less expensive (except for the specialty lenses like the 28mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor that sells for $1700). The 85mm f/1.8D is a tremendous lens for portraits, sports and general telephoto... and it's only $350. "Only $350" he says. Well, if you want to produce the best possible photograph, you have to go with the best possible lens for the job. There is also the 85mm f/1.4D at $1000 but it gives you an additional 2/3 stop of light, greater durability and aesthetic image quality.

All lenses tend to be at their sharpest at two stops from their smallest apeture - this is a very general rule of thumb due to the way light works. A lens with f/22 as its smallest apeture will look its best "usually" between f/11 and f/16. You have to experiment to find your lens' sweet spot.

I do not own any 3rd party lenses for my Nikon cameras, only Nikon lenses. I have no experience with other compatible lenses from other manufacturers - when I have purchased 3rd party products for other hobbies i've usually regretted it so I always forced myself to buy Nikon lenses for Nikon cameras.

Lens recommendations

Whether you buy the 18-55mm kit lens or choose to buy the body only, I would strongly recommend any of these lenses below:

20mm f/2.8D - 24mm equivalent for D-SLR - Very Wide angle - extremely sharp - a touch of primary chromatic aberration (red and blue fuzziness along edges of sharply-contrasting objects) but is reduced as you approach f/8 - you have to zoom in pretty deep with Photoshop to see it - Not the best lens for this camera but outstanding on my N90s/F90x/F5
24mm f/2.8D - 35mm equivalent for D-SLR - Fairly wide and is very sharp - its 35mm appearance is perfect for taking photos of groups of people or nature photography without making everything look a million miles away - a great lens for this camera
35mm f/2D - 53mm equivalent for D-SLR - extremely sharp - very fast autofocus down to a mere 6 inches from the front of the lens. 53mm is not a very exciting focal length but will make excellent head-to-chest images - another great lens for this camera - not as wide but it is f/2
60mm f/2.8D Micro - 90mm equivalent for D-SLR - this is actually a macro lens but can be used for any other purpose. It has thrilling image quality and dazzling sharpness. It's a nice choice for family photos or anything needing a modest telephoto - A great lens for this camera, especially for telephoto or macro
85mm f/1.8D - 128mm equivalent for D-SLR - telephoto with fast autofocus - a superb lens with wonderful image quality and sharpness. This lens makes great portraits, sports photos and close-ups in nature photography. It has a touch of secondary chromatic aberration (green and magenta fuzziness in the unfocused "bokeh" edges of shiny things) but is found with highly contrasting objects - a good lens for this camera, but the green/magenta edges can show up on extremely contrasting objects like shiny metal on black background, but not visible most of the time. works VERY well for people pictures or morning/evening light. i've taken great photographs with this lens at noon full daylight

The 12-24mm f/4G would be in my bag already if it weren't for the $900 price tag. It is currently the only super wide angle lens that will match well to the Nikon Digital SLRs.

If you can wait for Nikon to produce fixed-focal length wide angle lenses designed for D-SLR cameras, i'd do that instead. The Nikon 24mm f/2.8D is around $250, the 20mm f/2.8D is around $490 - the effective 24mm length of the 20mm lens on the D50 is pretty darned wide and the effective 35mm length of the 24mm lens on the D50 is definitely satisfactory for most uses. Go to your local camera store and look through the viewfinder of a D50 with each of these lenses and see for yourself if one or both suit your needs.

Prices for longer telephotos beyond the 85mm lens go up dramatically. Super wide angle lenses are ridiculous in price as well.

Flash / Speedlight

If you want an external flash, you will have to have the SB-600 or SB-800. I have the SB-28 which is a wonderful match for Nikon's film cameras but the Digital SLR cameras don't get along that well with the older flash units. I got the SB-600 and life is wonderful. The flash in the D50 is fine but I like to use a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce to soften the flash, plus the external flash allows you to rotate or angle the flash towards the ceiling for even more dispersement of the light. I'd rather save the battery in the camera and use AA batteries in the flash.

The Omni-Bounce is a great thing to have if you plan on taking many photos indoors, or any place that you need a flash. All of the harsh edges are softened and highlights are preserved. Thus, the SB-600 with the diffuser are a great combination.

Memory Cards

Sandisk Ultra II is good but Sandisk Extreme III 1GB SD Memory Card is the way to go. The cheap stuff that is the "normal" speed is pretty slow and if you have a few hundred images to pull off of the card it will take a while. The new Extreme III is light night and day. I haven't seen the Extreme III sold in stores yet however it's easily found at Amazon.

Lottery Winners

Nikon D2X. Film looks like film because film reacts at the molecular level - digital looks like digital because it responds at an electrical level, and as of September 2005 the Nikon D2X is the only digital camera to perform with characteristics like film. Some of this is due to the D2X's big CCD sensor although a lot of it is the software that processes what the CCD captures. By 2010 we'll be able to buy that level of technology for $650. I'd rather have the $3350 and wait!

Working Professionals

Real professional photographers are the best source for qualified information. I avoid magazines because the people writing the stories will not give a fair review for fear that their advertisers will go elsewhere. The only website I've found with truely useful information, especially about the Nikon D50, is Ken Rockwell's Nikon D50 Review. His entire site is a treasure of information.