D40 upgrade?

[highenuff89]

I bought the D40 a few months back and really love it. That being said I am wondering if it is worth it to upgrade to the 10megapix camera the D40x? Just looking at your input and thoughts.

thanks-

[fionndruinne]

Easy answer: unless you want to make bigger prints of your photos, it isn't worth buying a new camera.

The D40x is the same camera. It's just a little bit faster in continuous mode and produces substantially larger pictures. Notice I said larger, not better quality. That's all the megapixel bump is.

If you seriously want to upgrade your D40, save up a couple hundred more and buy the D80. It offers substantial feature upgrades, and that's what's worth paying more for.

[Rooz]

in a word...no.

d40 is a great entry level cam but if you are looking to upgrade your body, do so with a d80 at a later date. the 40x has the same main constraint as the d40...no internal AF motor. it essentially just has more MP.

[highenuff89]

Thanks for the input guys....I guess I saw the 10megapix thing and got excited.
I am only printing 4x6, with a crop and enlarge from time to time.
So the whole mega pix thing is overblown???


thanks again for the help

[fionndruinne]

For point-and-shoot cams with small sensors, full size photos aren't great quality-wise. Thus, displaying and printing at smaller sizes is usually better, and more megapixels can facilitate that. Even so, once a normal user goes over six megapixels, they're often wasting the extra cash.

With a DSLR, though, quality is still excellent up to full size. So a six megapixel like the D40 can produce very nice large photos. For extensive cropping, more MP comes in handy, but you have to deal with things like noise and detail loss the more cropping you do to an image, even at higher MP resolutions.

Basically, talk of upgrading a DSLR should refer to the lenses, not the body - until your skill level or needs come up against a wall: features your body doesn't have. Then it's time to think of an upgrade.

[Rooz]

mp is absolutely overnlown unless you are going into huge prints of very detailed subjects. at 4x6 you won;t notice the slightest bit of difference.

[Kellie]

Yup, definitely overblown. I often wish I had the 6 MP of the D40. It had slightly better high ISO performance than my D80 and the files were more manageable.

[tcadwall]

and the files were more manageableLOL! Now I know why you don't want to shoot RAW!!! You'll have serious management issues then! Part of the reason I started using iMatch. Most of my photos are now on DVD, but still searchable, browsable, and accessible from iMatch. If I want to edit an image that has been archived to DVD, it prompts me for the DVD that I will need to load. However, it keeps both a thumbnail, and a user-selectable higher res compressed version of every shot (if you configure it to).

Might want to consider that app for image management. The archive friendliness is a HUGE plus. Besides, you can do some pretty amazing things with its search capabilities (like searching for images with certain dominant color values, etc.)

Sorry I got so off-topic!!!

[nap]

I bought the D40 a few months back and really love it. That being said I am wondering if it is worth it to upgrade to the 10megapix camera the D40x? Just looking at your input and thoughts.

thanks-

If you're itching to spend your money somewhere, get a fast lens or the famous 18-200mm VR.

[fionndruinne]

Well, as you all probably know, I haven't been a fan of the D40x, but I will say this, coming from Jeff's review today: the ISO 100 on that camera is just beautiful, not so much with visible noise, but its color detail and the clarity and minuteness of its resolution. I'd like to see a comparison of the original D40's ISO 200, though; I suspect the D40x's larger sensor makes for a slight reduction in quality at that setting. The high ISOs look a bit worse on the D40x as well.