D100 - a good deal?

dhaval · Sep 2, 2010

Hi,

A friend of mine is getting rid of his old gear. He's looking to sell his D100, Nikkor 24-120 f/3.5 lens, and a SB-900 Flash - all for $400.

I thought that was an amazing deal, considering SB-900 or the lens cost around $500 by themselves.

Am I missing something here? If not what should I look out for?

Thanks,
Dhaval

Derrel · Sep 2, 2010

The flash + lens makes the deal worthwhile IMHO.

dhaval · Sep 2, 2010

Thanks Derrel. I was thinking the same.

Also is D100 a decent camera to get started off with (for my friend)? From what I can see the main difference seems to be the 6MP censor.

Derrel · Sep 2, 2010

D100 has some quirks unique to Nikons of that era...rather soft-looking out of camera JPEG images that need quite a bit of sharpening in post-processing....exceedingly slow compressed RAW writing, so comopressed NEF on the D100 is virtually unusable, so always shoot un-compressed RAWs with a D100, especially now that memory is so doggone big,and low-cost.

The D100's default tone curve was rather "dull" or low-contrast...the D100 had a lot of custom tone curve options designed for it by people like Joshua Dearing, whose "white wedding" curve was pretty popular. Nikons of the D1 and D100 era shot rather sickly-looking SOOC files...low-contrast,ugly-looking images that were designed to have the black point set in the individual Red,Green,and Blue channels, and then a rather harsh adjustment of the Curves, to make the images "Snap!".

Joshua Dearing had a web site called Photogenic something or other, as I recall...these custom curves could be loaded into the camera,using Nikon Capture software, or could be applied in post...the advantage of loading the various curves into the camera is that the Straight Out of Camera JPEGS (SOOC JPG) would look very beautiful...

The D100 was a fine camera for its day, but it demands a different use approach than newer cameras.

dhaval · Sep 2, 2010

Thanks again Derrel. That's a very useful reply.

Considering the quirks, I'm guessing she'd be better to start off her hobby with a D3000 instead. Though, shooting uncompressed RAW and applying a custom curve later doesn't sound like a big deal.

Derrel · Sep 2, 2010

Well, I'd still snag the SB-900 and 24-120 lens and the body for $400...the flash + lens combo at that price is a pretty good deal. I mentioned the compressed RAW quirk simply because today many people DO shoot compressed RAW, but the D100 was from an era when compressing RAW Data was not an easy thing to do for Nikon,and on the D100 it causes a huge, incredibly annoying slowing down of the camera. It's hard to believe how very,very,very slow compressed RAW was on the D100. Today, using compressed RAW is a no-brainer, but back when a 1-gigabytye IBM Microdrive cost $450, writing a few compressed RAWs could take a couple of minutes (literally). There's absolutely no need for compressed RAW on a 6-MP Camera with today's memory card prices.

I think you/she could probably buy the three pieces and ditch the D100,and still come out ahead. And yes, she'd probably rather own a D3000 than a D100...