I bought my first Nikon D100 in Nov 2002, and immediately fell in love with this little beastie. (I bought a second D100 in July '03.) This is a well-designed and very capable camera, and for me, was the perfect camera to tackle the steep learning curve with digital photography.
Custom Settings
The custom settings on the D100 make it even more versatile, allowing
each photographer the ability to configure the Nikon D100 in a personal way
to adapt the camera to the the photographer's specific methods of working.
Here are my preferences for the custom settings,
with explanations of why I prefer certain specific settings away from the defaults.
Accesories:
- Speedlight
A good flashgun is an essential accessory for a camera, and the Speedlights that Nikon make should be an obvious choice.
At the time when the D00 was released, the SB-80DX was the best Speedlight available, but this flashgun has been superceded by the SB-800. This powerful and feature-laden flashgun is your best option. - MB-D100 grip
What makes the MB-D100 grip an essential D100 accessory for me, is how it greatly improves the handling of the D100, offering vertical controls and better stability.
Concerns and quirks
There are a few problems and quirks with the D100 that are often mentioned by users of the D100.
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The first is, that the D100 seems to consistently produce images which look under-exposed by around 0.5 stops. Apparently this is due to Nikon's conservative approach to digital photography, in reducing the risk of detail lost due to over-exposure. Whatever the cause of the under-exposure problem, it does imply that a many photographs will need some post-processing. But there are work-arounds to this.
By dialing in 0.3 or 0.5 stops permanently when shooting in JPG mode, the overall brightness can be lifted. But this can may cause you to risk blowing out your highlights. The alternate which is slightly more intricate, but more elegant, is to use the custom tone curves to bump up the tonal levels of the images in camera. With a proper custom tone curve, the direct out-of-camera images are greatly improved, and the time spent post-processing in Photoshop can be reduced.
When the Nikon RAW file format, NEF, is used, the custom tone curve can be de-selected and one of the default tone curves selected afterwards if another tone curve might give better results. The RAW image file can then also easily be adjusted for exposure if needed. I often find that under some circumstances, a Normal tone curve with some exposure compensation added, gives me slightly better results than a custom tone curve. Shooting in NEF format easily gives this post-processing flexibility.
I have to mention here that I constantly see people complain on the various internet forums about the D100 under-exposing .. and in the vast majority of cases when they post sample images, it is obvious that the photographer had no idea how to use a camera's lightmeter. This problem seems to be especially prevalent with people who previously used colour print film and unknowingly had the lab correct their mistakes for them, and now expect the same results using digital cameras.
So please, before you latch onto the idea that the D100 is not a very capable camera, and that the D100 gives you grossly under-exposed images, make sure your metering technique is up to scratch. -
Another concern often voiced is that the D100 is conservative in how images are sharpened in camera. The general feeling is that the level of default in-camera sharpness processing is too low, and that the sharpening when set to high, may cause artifacts to appear under some circumstances.
I was originally of the opinion that the results using high sharpening looked great .. and that was true until I started making enlargements, whether on my own or using labs. The algorithms used in upsizing the photos bring out bad artifacts in high-sharpened photos. So I have revised my opinion on using high sharpening as a default when shooting JPGs.
It makes sense to approach in-camera sharpening in a conservative way like Nikon has, since it is impossible to de-sharpen an oversharpened image, but it is easy to add sharpening with Photoshop afterwards using tools like Unsharp Mask.
So if you don't go larger than 8x10 or 8x12 / A4 size, then using high sharpening shouldn't be a problem. If you need to go larger than that, then uprezing your high-sharpened photos might very well not give you the best results.
However, for a workflow involving hundreds of images - all shot in NEF - it is easier for me to keep my camera set to low sharpening. This way the 4x6 proofs do look crisp, and any images that I did post-processing on for the proof stage, don't need to be revisited to change the sharpening on the original file just to enable cleaner enlargements to be made. Once again .. it is easier to add sharpening later on in the post-processing.
However, because I shoot nearly exclusively in the NEF format, I have the option of going back to the image, and changing the sharpening after-the-fact for any image if need be. This gives me the greatest amount of flexibility.
So if you insist on shooting in JPG format, then using Low Sharpening or perhaps Normal sharpening, would be a better choice, and then you can tweak the image later on for the best results depening on the size you want to enlarge to.
The DPReview website shows the effect of the various types of sharpening available on the D100. -
Metering limitations of the D100.
Something that isn't immediately obvious how it could affect you negatively when you use the D100, is that the D100 metering is based on the F80 / N80 body. This causes the D100 exposure metering to act inconsistently at times in Matrix Metering mode.
Nikon engineers placed the same metering circuitry, which covers the 35mm image area, into the D100 body. But the D100 has an APS-sized sensor which is much smaller than the 35mm image area. This has the side-effect that the D100 actually meters outside the area you see in the viewfinder. So over-bright or very dark objects just outside the viewfinder area - but still falling inside the metering area, WILL affect your meter reading, without you realising it. This affects both ambient and D-TTL meter readings using Matrix metering.
Please note, this is not to say that D100 lightmeter is inaccurate. Meter readings from both my D100 bodies are as accurate as the lightmeter readings from my various F90x bodies, and I constantly rely on the built-in lightmeter of the D100 when I check my ambient light. Just be aware that there is this idiosyncracy which may make the light meter readings inconsistent under the conditions mentioned.
And for peace of mind, issues that aren't ..
- Back-focusing problems might plague other cameras, but the D100 appear to be free of this. I don't recall any consistent reports about this on the various internet forums, unlike the Canon 10D.
- And despite misgivings from new D100 owners,
the CF door is much more durable than you'd think!
Overall comments
Finally, despite a few gripes about some things,
I'll say it again ..
this a superb camera.
The D100 is a very capable camera giving stunning results - great colours and lovely
skin tones. It is easy to operate and learn, and it offers a great combination of high-tech automation and complete user control.
Please feel free to e-mail me.