One of the nice things about working five jobs is it affords me the luxury of giving in to my baser desires. And oh, baby, am I about to succumb. They say “once you go black you never go back,” and it's true. Ebony body, tight, compact, sharp, and auto-focus… I write, of course, of the NIkon D80, one step down from the professional-grade D200 and hundreds of dollars less expensive.
I've been a Nikon gal from my SJSU photojournalism days. Even when people fled Nikon en masse for Canon I doggedly stuck to my N2000 and then my N8000. Bought a 300/2.8 lens from Terry Schmitt, my UPI boss who also let me tote his F3hm with a motor drive for a year — truly, a prince among men — and used that awesome lens to shoot some football pictures that I'm pretty sure got me one of my current jobs as a digital photojournalism instructor at a local college.
Three frames per second. Ten-point-two megapixels. Power-up time of .18 second. ISO from 100 to 3200. Up to 2,700 images on one battery charge. Ohhhhhh. And, a 1.5 focal conversion rate that'll turn my 300/2.8 into a whopping 450/28.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Excuse me.