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Home >> Photography >> Digital Nikon D100 Page
2 - Test Shots with Various Settings Prologue I suspected
that I was very high on the list, that according them was in the double-digits.
As a friend of mine put, I would probably be waiting until Christmas
for Camera
Saturday, July 6 I received an email from my local contact confirming six new D100 bodies in the shop with two already spoken for. My contact Henry held one for me and by doing so, he alone sold half of the six by himself. I was unable to immediately pick it up and had to wait until Monday, by which time the remaining three D100s were sold and gone. Sometimes it pays to be a loyal local shopper at a good store, personal contact allowed me to obtain a D100 probably ahead of many more hopeful purchasers. However, I received no discount off of the retail price of $3350 CAN, which is to be expected since the owner can sell all that he receives as quickly as he gets them in. I did not mind not receiving a discount on the D100 but I was rather surprised at the higher than retail prices Broadway had for the accessories. I picked up a spare EN-EL3 battery pack for higher than even Vistek of Toronto charges for the item. Lucky for me I did not have to consider picking up the MB-D100 from Broadway at the rather astronomical $500 compared to $400 from Vistek. The lone MB-D100 they had was already set aside and paid in advance by a local news photographer. First Impressions
Why was I ambivalent towards the D100? Forget about the D100 model number and the pathetic attempt at associating it with the very fine Nikon F100 film camera. The D100 is a digital F80 and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise has snake oil in his vest pocket. Granted that the innards have been greatly modified to accommodate the digital electronics of the camera but the D100 is still a polycarbonate clad camera, at least on the outside. Others are supporting Nikon's specious claims about the D100 being a wholly different beast unto itself. Hmm...let's see, the D100 merely uses the F80 shell and everything has been tinkered with. Really? Well, the D100 not only uses the outside shell but borrows the F80's 10 segment Matrix meter, the same autofocus engine, the same AF point layout with the exact same sensitivity for the centre AF point and less sensitive outer AF points. Aside from the digital guts of the camera, what do you have left for the basic camera if it is not an F80? People who had handled the preproduction versions of the D100 claimed a rubber cover that was similar to the F100’s. Well, the D100’s cover is indeed rubber instead of textured plastic as on the F80 but on the D100 it is neither as thick nor as generous as on the F100. The D100 is physically smaller than the F100, which is no surprise since the F80 is such a small camera. The weight is light and my subjective impression is that it is lighter than even the Canon D30. It is an easy to use camera for the most part but the controls and dials seem rougher and less smooth than the F100. Many people seem to like mode dials for their ease of use for beginning photographers. I think mode dials have their place but not on a camera that is going to cater to a great many serious amateur and professional photographers. Nikon has had an ergonomically effective method of accessing the camera controls since the days of the venerable F801 (N8008) that continued through the F601, F90 series and now the F100 (the F70 being the decried exception). The use of buttons for access to key features of the camera such as mode, flash, ISO among others is imminently functional and fast to dial in via the command dial. The mode dial can be a bottleneck for fast shooting situations but will likely not be a factor for static shooting such as in the studio and for landscapes. Please keep in mind that I have only owned the camera for a few hours as of this writing and my opinions and comments will likely be modified as I flesh out this report. Camera speed in terms of operation and auto focusing is not as crisp as the F100. The D100’s AF performance seems typical of consumer cameras and did not provide the zip that the F100 offers with my non-AFS 80-200mm f2.8 lens. My first impression is that I might not want to use this camera for a fast paced wedding shoot that I would otherwise not concern myself with when using the F100. Tactile pleasure is not on the same level as the F100. The F100 is solid and confidence inspiring, the D100 less so and I do worry about how it would fare in inclement weather. The CF card door does not seem particulary robust (a Nikon weak spot as evidenced by the earlier Coolpix series?) and it does not have rubber seals or o-rings to keep moisture and dust out. For that matter, neither does the battery compartment door at the bottom of the camera. The D100 ships with the DK-10 rubber eyecup, which is nice of Nikon to include instead of making us spend $20 CAN on it but the design of the DK-10 is nearly useless. The accessory eyecup for the F70 is superior and is what I had thought the DK-10 would be. Even better would be the round eyecup available for the D1 series of cameras (and for the F5 and F100 too). Well, I suppose the DK-10 is good for eyeglass wearers since they won't have to worry about scratches to plastic lenses. The plastic cover that comes with the D100 is excellent in terms of visibility. I have only glanced at a Hoodman equipped D1H once and noted how clear the image was on the LCD. It is the same on the D100 and kudos to Nikon for this slick piece of gear. I see no reason ever to take the plastic cover off again unless it became damaged. Familiarity with the D100 and its menu system is obviously weak right now but it did become clearer in a matter of minutes after perusing through the custom functions and setting them. For a person already use to using consumer digital cameras, the move up to a D100 should not be hard at all. That’s
it for now. I am awaiting delivery of two Ridata 512 MB compact flash
cards from
More to come but I will not do any sort of detailed listing of camera functions and features. Phil Askey, Steve Sanders and Dave Etchells have all done so in exceedingly detailed reviews. My comments to come will be more inspired by Michael Reichmann of the Luminous Landscape and how he reviewed the Canon D60.
The F100 is Nikon’s 2nd level camera after the now venerable and still formidable F5, which is still going strong but who knows for how much longer. The F100 is a highly capable camera, one that could hold its own against the likes of other brand’s top tier cameras. For the build quality and performance you receive, it is a remarkable deal at around $1800 CAN compared to about $3200 CAN for the F5 (remarkable being relative here, since the highly capable F90x, which provided much the same performance as the F100, sells for around $1000.) The D100 sells for nearly double what the F100 sells for and in most stores squeaks past the F5 for overall dollar cost. The D100, for its exterior shell and main feature set, is based upon the $700 CAN F80 camera. One is obviously not paying the rather hefty fee of $3350 CAN for the tactile pleasure of a $700 camera. You pay for the inner guts of the camera that represents the state of the art for the “affordable” class of digital SLRs (affordable also being relative here since most consumers will still not be able to justify and afford the D100’s cost.) I am having a harder time than I thought in getting past the $700 F80 origins of the D100. This is the most expensive camera I have ever bought. My Bronica SQ-Ai costs more after adding a prism and a film back but in its basic camera box form, the SQ-Ai registers in at just over $2000 new. I suppose what I really wanted to believe is that the $3350 paid for would really provide me with a D100 that would be close to the F100 in build quality and heft. I already knew that this would not be the case but I deluded myself anyway, so it was a let down when I received the D100 and it became evident that it really is nothing more than a digital F80. In fairness the pricing of the D100 vis a vis its older and larger brothers in the D1 series seems consistent with the way Nikon prices its film cameras. You have to pay more than double the cost of the F80 to move up to the F100 and so it is with the D100, you have to pay more than double the cost to move up to the D1x (a little less than double for the D1H). It is digital itself that throws the prices out of whack at this time but for how much longer? My local shop of Broadway Camera has reorganized the store to reflect where most of its sales come from. The digital section use to occupy a small counter area off to the side of the store while film cameras and lenses occupied pride of place in the middle of the store layout. Now the reverse is true because according to one sales person there, eight out of ten new camera sales are digital. Heady stuff! Now that I’ve got the sour grapes and whine out of my system (no cheese please), let me look at the D100 on its own merits.
MB-D100 I was initially disappointed when I first received the MB15 for the F100. The MB15 did not exude the same quality as the camera itself. I am less disappointed in the MB-D100 because I did not expect Nikon to build it any better than the D100 and I was correct in my assumption. It does come with a slightly better feature set than the MB15 in a sub-command dial has been added to the front of the grip for full manual control in portrait mode shooting. Loading the AA battery tray seems a bit finicky at first due to the small, white spring-loaded tabs in the top corners of the opening. These need to be push aside for the tray of EN-EL3 to fit in. Easier the second and third time around and not an issue once you’re comfortable with it. With two EN-EL3 cells loaded, one could shoot as much as 1000 frames without flash according to Nikon, very interesting to see if such is indeed true. The D100/MB-D100 combo can be powered by either the dual EN-EL3 configuration or by a single EN-EL3 in either of the two slots, it makes no difference. First Serious Use With
the full kit in my hands I tested the camera out the same day at
The camera acquitted itself quite nicely in actual use. Most of the shots were static so the speed of the camera was not an issue. However, when I was taking some shots of the couple walking in the park, using Dynamic AF and Continuous Servo, the low frame rate and small buffer made their limitations known as I quickly ran out of shooting frames. This is a camera in which deliberate use is required in terms of how you shoot and when you release the shutter. It will take some time to edit the images but what I’ve seen so far in Nikon View 5 is very promising in terms of quality. Speaking of which Nikon View 5 is impressive in how fast it produces the thumbnail size images when you access the images folder of your computer. I’m using a P4 XP machine with 1 GB of RAM, so I’m sure that must help a bit. I will
be off to Whistler this weekend (the trendy ski resort a couple of hours
out of
That old saying about best-laid plans seemed to apply to me the past weekend wherein I spent in reveling with some lads in the skiing resort town of Whistler, two-hours outside of Vancouver. Ahh...Whistler, the party place for the young of British Columbia. The meat market in the mountains for young, nubile flesh, scantily clad in the summer warmth. The place where young skiers go to earn minimum wage, sleep in closets due to the lack of affordable housing and party every night. I am but a mere 31 years of age but I felt strangely out of place amongst all the young 20 somethings crowding the Village. Anyway, back to our regular program... My intentions were to try and take some photos for myself when time permitted, which would have been Sunday morning. However, partying and babysitting the overly drunk groom-to-be led to a very late Saturday night and getting up after a few hours of sleep was no longer in my plans. As it is, as I type this on Monday morning, I still feel like crap and I did not even drink much at all. I hate getting old! I did use the D100 for a number of snap shots of the partying during the stag party and the camera was a hit amongst the guys for being able to review a sequence of shots right after taking them. Most of the shots taken were single shot moments but there were a couple of action sequences. One was set-up by me to test out the motor drive and continuous shooting sequence of the D100. I was napping in the hotel room when one of the guys came to get me for some photos of the hot tub overflowing with dish soap foam. Previous occupants of the hot tub put in a small amount of soap that quickly became a tub full of suds. After taking the amusing sight of five guys in a massive bubble bath, the fellows went into the outdoor pool. This is when I asked them to line up and jump in at the same time. Six shots were taken in JPEG capture mode (medium resolution) with two frames showing the guys jumping off and getting some airtime. The D100 did all right in this example but I have little doubt that I could have gotten many more frames off in the time the jump took place, with the F100/MB15 – not that I really needed anymore than the five-six shots from the D100.
To keep things simple, I shot with Auto White Balance settings in Aperture Priority mode with the majority of images set for medium resolution JPEG Fine quality. Fun snapshots that will only be seen, as 4x6 prints hardly require the extra steps of editing required of NEF images. The D100 was obviously a little more responsive in JPEG capture mode than NEF, thanks to the extra frames allowed for the buffer. In using the D100 for this casual shooting weekend, I would have found little to be gained by using the F100 instead. It felt good in the hands with the MB-D100 attached although the controls took a slight adjustment to get use to (the AF selector pad and AF-On controls are slightly off vis a vis the F100). I took about 100 shots this weekend but chimped 10 or so during review sessions and another dozen when back home and doing final edits. With a 512 MB compact flash card and JPEG capture settings I was never wanting for more frames for the way I was shooting. Being freed from film and not knowing how the shots came out is incredibly librating. I did not get into the habit of reviewing every single image after taking it because one is not always going to have time to do so but there is usually a spare moment or two for a quick review of the shots taken. That’s when I can magnify and check the image data details recorded for every shot (histogram, highlight blow-outs, etc.) and see if the image is what I wanted or delete if not. Although I had some clueless moments when magnifying the image beyond the default and then trying to get back to the main image screen, accessing the images was quick and easy via the AF selector pad.
The weekend was overcast over Whistler with showers during the early afternoon when our little group joined up with some other stags in a game of paintball. Generally, a low contrast setting but still enough to see the cloudy skies burn out in order to expose the main subjects correctly. I was at the default ISO 200 equivalent setting for all of these daytime shots. As day turn to evening and then to night, I adjusted the ISO setting to 400 for a few shots but very quickly dialed in ISO 800 to see if the initial reviews about its low noise was true. Flash was used in conjunction for these higher ISO settings, the results? I cannot say I was impressed with the amount of noise seen in the ISO 800 shots taken when viewed at 100% magnification. I think the noise is excessive and not usable for anything larger than 4x6 prints. The noise is, however, film grain-like but I’m not so sure it is superior to the way a good ISO 800 film would render the shots. Flash use seemed a mixed bag of results. A small number seemed good and what I expected whereas most of the flash shots were underexposed and required Photoshop editing to equalize the levels and curve the brightness up. D-TTL is an unknown quantity for me and will require much more use on my part for an informed opinion. Note that although I took some low-light shots with the built-in flash, the majority was with the SB28DX. At this point in the game, after one week of ownership, I would not have the confidence to use it yet for any serious social event photography, but then this type of photography was not my only reason for purchasing the D100. Below are some examples of what I received in terms of the original capture for a flash shot at left and my edit at right.
A shot in overcast light that had me wonder about the Nikkor 18-35mm f3.5-4.5D AF ED lens. The cropped frame at right is at 200% magnification and shows chromatic abberation as a blue fringe following the outer edge of the white tent. The 18-35mm lens was all that I used over the weekend despite having my 80-200mm f2.8 lens in the bag. Color wise though, the D100 seems accurate enough with NEF capture providing the best quality. JPEG capture seemed to have the typical cyan cast to flesh tones as usually seen in shots taken with my Coolpix 950 but even NEF capture had some cyan overtones in overcast light.
More comments and testing to come in the days ahead, especially this coming weekend, when I hope to really get the measure of what the D100 can do. July 17, 2002 - I realized that I had made an error with the manner in which I used the D100 and SB28DX combo for the shots I complained about above. The flash was in Matrix D-TTL mode, which would be a fill-flash setting meant for good ambient light levels. Use of Matrix TTL mode in low ambient light settings generally result in underexposure, as attested to by so many Nikon users world wide. In low light settings, regular TTL mode (or D-TTL in this case) is what is required, or best of all, if possible, Slow or Rear Curtain Sync mode to balance the ambient with the flash exposure (with camera on a tripod). This is case of a photographer not thinking about the use of the equipment and not the equipment being at fault. Update - July 21, 2002 - Test sample image page has been created (page 2 of the D100 report). More revisions to be made about my initial impressions of the camera from the Whistler shots. I reported being unimpressed with the ISO 800 shots but now after doing some further testing, I have to admit that the unimpressive results had more to do with the SB28DX and D100 working to underexpose the flash shots in Matrix D-TTL than of the actual quality of ISO 800. The test shots revealed to me that ISO 800 is quite good and should be a very usable option for low-light shooting indoors with the flash properly set to regular D-TTL, not Matrix D-TTL. I am, however, unimpressed with Nikon's specifications with regard to the buffer capacity for the D100. Shooting in Aperture Priority as well as Manual exposure modes with shutter speeds in the range of 1/500 to 1/1000 in bright daylight, I was only able to match Nikon's claim of 6 JPEG captures in the buffer but not for any other format. I thought I read somewhere that in JPEG capture mode, the D100 had a 7 frame buffer but the PDF brochure downloaded from Nikon Japan indicates 6 frames. NEF-RAW saw only 3 frames allowed in the buffer and TIFF only 5 frames and not the claimed 4 and 6 respectively. One addendum to make is that the D100 does indeed continue shooting frames if the finger is kept depressed on the shutter release while the buffer is being cleared of its backlog. I assumed otherwise because the time to write took so long that I took my finger off the shutter release. If you need to shoot some action with the D100 (not recommended) then JPEG capture is your only decent choice to run off 6 frames in a few seconds. NEF is not too bad with a three frame burst but you'll be waiting just over 7 seconds for the next shot to be allowed. TIFF is next to useless in my opinion, not as good as NEF and seemingly, to my eyes, no better than JPEG-Fine. Why bother with the 43 second per image write times for these huge 17 MB file sizes? The voice annotation feature of the MB-D100 works like a charm. Take a shot, then press the microphone button on the left side of the MB-D100, just above the 10-pin connector socket. Bring the camera near your mouth and record the message by keeping the microphone depressed. A wave file will then be recorded and appended to the last image file taken. You have a choice of deleting both the wave and image file or just the wave or just the image file only. Volume control is buried in the menu system and pressing the microphone button plays back the message recorded for the image through the tiny speaker on the same side as the button. It's all pretty slick but again, I'm not so sure that it is something I really need to use. The exposure data recorded with every image is more valuable to me but this EXIF data and the annotation feature are enough that you can toss the ratty old notebook you use to always carry out into the field to record exposure data. The quality of the images printed via my Epson 1270 are quite nice. It is a bit hard for me to quantify them to any degree since this is my one and only experience with a D-SLR but a 12x18 printed at only 166 dpi holds up very well thank you, although it does become a bit soft when viewed at nose to paper distances, which is obviously not the norm. But even at those close, critical viewings, I can see no digital artifacts. 6.5x10 prints at 300 dpi are excellent and I would defy anyone to tell me that they are not true photographs. One aspect of owning the D100 that I have to become use to is determining how sharp the image should appear on the monitor before printing. It was not something I paid a huge amount of attention to via the Coolpix 950, since most of the images were printed at 3x5 or 6x8 sizes, the CP 950's resolution not being capable of being pushed any further without artifacts introducing themselves. However, with 6 megapixels on tap, there is the tendency to view the image larger than they need to be for a given print size and then expecting the sharpness to maintain itself at those large viewing sizes. Sharpness here is referring to the clarity of the image as adjusted by Photoshop's Unsharp Masking filter and not to how much detail can be resolved, which would be the film definition of sharpness. My expectations for image quality and clarity was enormous given the hype and initial reviews available on the Internet but I think I need to keep those expectations in check. Especially until I have done a greater variety of shooting with the D100. I will have further comments to make on this topic in the future. One interesting thing discovered since buying the D100 and joining a Nikon Digital mailing list, is how Mac users face an unfamiliar position of being in an inferior position to PC users vis a vis Nikon software. Spefically, Nikon Capture is apparently a pig to run on even state of the art Mac systems whereas PC users running pretty run-of-the-mill systems are experiencing decent performance. Even third-party options such as Bibble are no speed demons on Mac systems. interesting stuff but of no consequence for me since I'm not going anywhere as far as switching to Mac is concerned but what is it with the snide comments of these guys who use a system that has all but 3-5% of the computer market and cannot accept that Nikon made a business decision to support the largest group of computer users in the world first? And, yes, yes I know that Mac has a dominant position among professional graphics and publishing users, so no need for any Mac supporting comments to be sent. Next on the agenda, comparisons to 35mm and medium format and how the D100 will fare with monolight shoots. This will defnitely take me some time to coordinate, so please be patient for the next update. I made some comments about how poor the D100's ISO 800 performance was with flash based upon a weekend trial with the SB28DX set to Matrix D-TTL mode. Since that first weekend of use, I have tried the ISo 800 settings in good light and with flash set properly to regular D-TTL mode and am quite impressed with the quality received. Here are some sample images (I hope my future brother-in-law, Brian, will forgive me for revealing his 1970's wild and crazy kind of guy alter ego):
Update - July 27, 2002 Nikon Canada has posted a notice on their web site indicating some early samples of the D100 suffer a problem with the White Balance bracketing feature. Canadian owners of the D100 can ship the camera back to Nikon Canada's Mississauga office. The most recent shipment of D100's in Canada will have either a blue or green sticker dot near the serial number on the outside of the box. These colored stickers indicate that the D100 inside has already been corrected for the White Balance bracketing problem. Further details at Nikon Canada's web page. I had not tried the White Balance bracketing feature of my own D100, which does not have the color sticker on the box, but did so as soon as a friend sent word of the problem to me. If the camera is set to a white balance of Cloudy for example, bracketing just alters the setting within Cloudy itself. The test shots I did with my D100 indicate subtle changes but I can see the differences whereas the problem cameras reveal no differences when doing a White Balance bracketing and then viewing the images right away with the camera's LCD, while the images are still writing. Whew! However, I'll likely send the camera into Nikon before the one-year warranty expires for a thorough going over, just in case. In the July 21 update I indicated that my D100 did not meet Nikon's stated specs for the buffer in the various formats available (RAW, TIFF, JPEG). Thanks to an email from a reader (Keith Snell), I discovered that it was my setting of the Noise Reduction feature (Custom Setting 4) that was the cause of the buffer to be smaller than specified. Turning CF 4 off, allowed the D100 to meet the rated specs without any problems. In fact, the JPEG setting has only an ever so slight delay after the 6th frame and writes so fast to the card that it is difficult to detect. Unfortunately, I still do not think the camera can actually fire at 3 fps and only in manual focus mode, can it even come close. I have today encountered my first experience with dust on the CCD as seen in the sample shots below and pointed out by the red markers. I gave the camera a cleaning session with my first use of the EH-5 AC adapter. At this point in time, the dust is not a huge issue given how small they are and how easy they would be to clean up in Photoshop. Also today, I saw the first signs of the battery indicator starting to ebb. Only the first little triangle of the battery indicator in the camera's top LCD is gone, after some 500 captures using dual EN-EL3 cells in the MB-D100. Not just straight capture either with generous use of the back LCD for viewing and menu settings. I have also used the camera to download images to the computer directly in recent times instead of the San Disk card reader I normally would use. As of this typing, I am now at 871 captures and the dual cells are still going strong without any other signs of ebbing (the large count of 270 captures were from test sessions for the White Balance bracketing as well as for the buffer - all deleted as soon as I got my results, I love digital!).
My dual EN-EL3 cells in the MB-D100 finally gave up the ghost tonight after four and half weeks of ownership and 1119 captures (the vast majority being RAW files). Also, keep in mind that I used the D100 for downloading the image files to the computer several times, so for pure capture use only, the EN-EL3 cells could have likely gone on past 1200 captures. After the EN-EL3's went kaput, I loaded in the six-AA cell holder loaded with 1700 mHa Ni-MH Energizer rechargeables. I wanted to see how long these rechargeable cells would last vis a vis the EN-EL3's. Unfortunately, I have nothing to report because the Ni-MH cells did not have enough juice to power the D100. I suspect this is an issue of voltage since most Ni-MH cells are only 1.2 volts and 6x1.2 is 7.2 volts whereas one EN-EL3 is 7.4 volts. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about voltage can add to this topic, email me if you wish. I know the Energizer cells are good because they are quite new and I have had no problems with their use in the F100/MB15 combination. Of course, the MB15 takes 6 cells but requires lower voltages than the D100. Use of alkalines and lithium AA cells in the battery holder worked perfectly, but I have no desire to see how long these types of batteries would last with the power-hungry D100, especially the lithiums at $10 per cell. The EN-EL3's work so well that I have no concerns about using the D100 for a long and full day of shooting of 1000 captures. Given how long it took me to do the first 1000, I suspect few problems with the batteries (keep in mind that many of that first 1000 was just testing various aspects of the D100's features). Update - August 13, 2002 - Some comments and personal opinion about the suitability of the D100 or any D-SLR, for a wedding shoot. Page 3 of the D100 Report Update - September 28, 2002 - This review is now essentially complete with the addition of Page 4 - Digital vs. Film, Page 5 - Studio Lighting, and Page 6- Executive Summary. Due to an oversight I was unable to do meaningful comparisons to scanned 35mm film. If and when I have another opportunity to scan the 35mm test shots, I will update Page 4 with sample images and more comments. Update - July 1, 2003 - The first anniversary of my purchasing the D100 and an interesting experience report came my way via an industry source about a climber using a Nikon D100 for a trek in the Himalayas to celebrate Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's 50th anniversary first ascent up Mount Everest. In his own words about the D100:
The performance of the D100 in such harsh conditions should help to alleviate the worry from those of us with less than good thoughts about plastic-shelled cameras (yours truly shamefully amongst the disparaging lot, who will likely never even come close to putting his own D100 in the same kind of conditions as Trevor Kloeden did with his). |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2010 Edwin Leong |
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I
consider myself fortunate that I was able to purchase a Nikon D100 digital
SLR so quickly after I made up my mind to do so. The D100 is a hot ticket
item and one that many have had to place themselves on waiting lists
at various retail outlets. I purchased the camera on
Let
me set the record straight and admit that the D100 is not what I wanted
for my first digital SLR. I really wanted the D1x and barring that then
the future D2. Having realized that my meager finances would not allow
for a D1x, I was trying to decide if film would continue to be factor
for me. Should I go with a Nikon 8000ED medium format film scanner and
continue shooting film or should I cut my ties once and for all and
start the way down the digital path. I went back and forth and I acknowledge
that from a purely qualitative perspective, going with the Nikon 8000ED
and the 
I
have been making comparisons of the D100 to the F100 film camera. Is
this a fair comparison, after all it would seem to be an apples to oranges
kind of thing. Well, I’m doing it out of practicality since I own no
other digital SLR to compare the D100 to and I do think it is relevant
to a certain extent. Nikon is trying to make obvious representations
about the D100 and its quality by using the "100" number in
its name. 
