Hey Jack TheRipper, Nikon Owes You A Thanks For A Sale.
 

I bought my wife a D40 for Christmas. She (hell, BOTH of us) love it. So damn easy to use, and such insanely nice looking pics. It's amazing. Here's an example. This pic was taken by me, through the close passenger window of my wife's SUV, while driving at about 65-70MPH. I had it on the S setting (where you control the shutter speed) and if I remember correctly, it was set at either 125 or 250.

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Great photo.

Lol.. Lookin good!

It really is an easy camera. about 80% of the time i have it on P (Program mode) it seems to perform pretty well there. Ill jump to Shutter when doing higher speed shots, and play around with A (aperture) when taking pics of the kids or bug and stuff. M is a pretty trucky mode but it gives you full control over the camera which helps for trick shots and such.

Slight reccommendation, dial the Exposure setting down to -0.7 i did this from a reccommendation from Ken Rockwell on his website and it looks great!

Looking forward to seeing some good pics from ya!

Good looking pic. I have a bid up for a d40x which is the 10 mp version of the d40 and a bid on a d200 as well. Nikon cameras are awesome!

i hate to say it, but pass on the D40x, it has the exact same image sensor split into 10mp instead of 6.1, the pixels are supersmall and the D40x shows more noise at higher iso levels, If you go with the D40 you wont have this issue, and i have printed pics that are 11inch by 17inch with no hint of pixelization. So unless you plan to print bigger than 11x17 the added money does nothing for resolution except to introduce more noise in the pic in lower light situations.

if you are planning into turning this into a hobby try to get a D80. it has a built in motor for the autofocus which the D40/D40x/D60 do not, which means the lenses cost more cause you have to pay for the lenses with the built in motor unless you want to manually focus.

all in all, the D40 is probably about the best camera you can possibly buy for the price. It packs so many of the high end abilitys into a very easy to use and flexable camera.

D40 FTW!

I wish I could afford a d80. I just bid on a d40x because of the price. I will get outbid being that my max is only 200.00. I have my eyes on a couple of regular d40's as well. I've been looking at d80's for a while, but they are hard to come by even used for a decent price...

I head that. The only complaint i have on the D40 is the lack of internal motor for autofocus lenses. Im eyeing a 70-300m lens and a 50m 1.8f and neither will autofocus on the nikon, to get the AF-S it is a bit pricier. lol.

200, well hell if you can nab up a 40x for 2 hundo that is pretty sweet. lol.