My New (Used) Kodak DCS-760

[dougjgreen]

I just picked this nice tank of a digital camera on ebay for slightly under $1100 including charger, AC adapter, and a couple of battery packs. This camera is a 4 year old 6.1 MegaPixel DSLR built into the chassis of a Nikon F5. When it was new 4 years ago, the complete kit was an $8000 setup. I could not afford a D2x, and I didn't want to get a D50 / D70 / D100, because none of these would meter with my Manual Focus Nikon AI and AIS lenses. So I was looking at used D1x and this DCS-760 as the best alternatives. I went this route, because the reviews I've seen seem to indicate that the Images were slightly sharper than that of the 5.3 Megapixel D1x, and also because Kodak has done a great job keeping firmware support available for this for free, which Nikon hasn't done with the D1x. The D1x is a bit lighter and smaller, since it's based on the F100, while this is based on the F5. This camera is also a bit faster in bursts than the D1x, and since it's an F5 chassis, it has interchangeable finders. But basically, this camera is quite comparable to a D1x, but for my personal needs, I thought it was slightly higher value than a used D1x, which probably would have set me back $100-200 more in similar condition. Here's a shot from my first shoot with it, using my Tamron 90mm f2.5 SP Macro (a manual focus lens). Hopefully, the serious compression I had to apply to get this shot down to 128K to attach it here doesn't degrade the quality to the point folks can't tell what the camera and lens are capable of:

[JDArt]

Hey, great shot. Keep us posted on your learning curve with the camera and show us some more photos from it.

[dougjgreen]

Another nice feature of the DCS-760 is that the crop factor is only 1.3X, so I HAVE true wide angles for it, with my 17mm lens being an effective 22mm and my 20mm becoming an effective 26mm. So this is not too far from a full frame camera.