blah!
My daughter who was moving around here on my D40 with a 50mm f/1.8D
AF-D (not AF-S or AF-I, so no autofocus on the D40!) shot at f/2.8, 1/60s, and Auto ISO at 1400. Due to cleaner high ISO, this looks better than if I had taken it on my D80! The metering works just great. You can use any Nikon F-mount lens back to 1959 on the D40 except for a few intrusive fisheyes which you can't use on a lot of other cameras either. All you have to do is use an external meter, or just guess at the exposure using the histograms until you get it right with the older lenses.
Bam! :mrgreen:
I love using primes on my D40 so much. It's such a small and compact camera which makes it a perfect match for small little prime lenses. Manually focusing "can be" difficult, but usually only at apertures larger than f/2.8 where the focusing screens no longer show any difference. After I get back from vacation in late Feb I'm going to order a Katz Eye screen for my D40 and start using my primes with it a lot more. That'll let me get better results at apertures larger than f/2.8. You don't need to be shooting at maximum aperture just to enjoy primes.
I've noticed that most of the people complaining about the D40 don't own them, in a lot of cases don't even shoot Nikon, and a lot of times what they claim is blown way out of proportion and really only half true, or not true at all, or just a personal opinion which may or may not be relevant to others looking for advice.
HERE is the big thread on this. Read through that whole thing and then people can decide for themselves.