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No More Film in My Refrigerator
As of this week, I can again use my entire refrigerator for food. Having sold my last Nikon F100 in order to buy a second D100 as a backup, I am now 100 percent digital.
When I first bought a D100 back in October of last year, I really didn't know what to expect. I have had a CoolPix for a couple of years now and knew that it wasn't practical for taking "real" photographs yet I knew that the future belonged to digital. My hope was that the D100 would let me get in on the ground floor and at least learn what I need to such that eventually Nikon would release a DSLR that would give me the quality I was looking for. I never guessed that the D100 itself would be that camera. I mean, after all, it's only got six megapixels.
Once I got it, I was immediately impressed with the results. If I took a 4000 dpi scan of a slide from my CoolScan 4000 ED and enlarged it to see the actual pixels, it was invariably somewhat soft. The D100 images at full size though were still amazingly sharp. Quite remarkable.
The following month I went on a trip to Canon Beach, Oregon that would later prove to be the last time I was to shoot film. I didn't know it at the time of course. It was only a weekend trip so I didn't take the D100 figuring I didn't want to take that much for just the weekend. By my next trip I had had the D100 long enough that not only did it go with me, neither F100 ever came out of the bag. I sold one F100 immediately thereafter. Once Nikon released the 12-24mm DX lens I was hooked. Now both F100's are gone along with the film.
Shortly, Nikon will release the new D2h, and they are expected to announce both the D2x and a replacement for the D100 some time next year. Will the D100 and other current digital SLR's become obsolete once new models are released? Depends on what you mean, but in my book the answer would be "no." Even once new models are released, current ones will continue to produce images just as good as they do now, and that's pretty darned good. Digital is changing rapidly, but if you've ever wondered about when it will mature enough to seriously consider, wonder no more — the future is here now.
By the way, not only does the D100 not use film, it has its own proprietary rechargeable lithium ion battery that works quite well and lasts a long, long time. Maybe it's time to start thinking about all those batteries in my freezer....
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