About 3 years ago I decided it was time to upgrade from my Nikon D100. I’d had the D100 for 5 years, and it had been a terrific camera. Even though I’d taken about 30,000 shots, it was still in excellent condition. I decided to look out for a used Nikon D200. A friend had once loaned me one briefly, and I really liked it. The screen was much bigger, the sensor better and it still metered with manual focus lenses.
As I was looking, much to my surprise, I found that some Nikon D2X’s weren’t a whole lot more. The D2X offered a few things the D200 didn’t – HUGE batteries that would last 2,000 shots a charge, better 12MP sensor, metal body and 10 frames per second; but no in built flash, like most pro D-SLRs.
One day I saw a D2X advertised for $1,200, and I was determined to get it. A pro was selling it, and she was looking at getting the then new D300. It looked like it had had a fair bit of use, but (for then) it was cheap. The lady gave me a further $200 discount and an extra battery – PERFECT!
When I got it home I found that it was a huge step up from the D100. Beautiful colours with tons of details and it worked extremely well with the Nikon SB-800 flash I had bought for it. It’s first major try out was my brother in law’s wedding in May 2008. The results were very, very good – even with the very consumer Nikon 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 lens.
The longer I had it however it started to develop the occasional issue. It needed new grips, battery door and then the AF and meter started doing weird things. Luckily I have a contact at Nikon Canada and so it was fixed quickly and cheaply, but it’s unreliability was annoying. What I also found out was that it had a LOT of shutter actuations – around 200,000!! Sounds like a lot, but the shutter in these are built for over 300,000 actuations, with 500,000 being recorded by some cameras! So it had a lot more miles on than I previously thought, which probably accounted for some of the unreliability.
I sold it after about 3 years of ownership, a little after I bought the D700, and interestingly it ended up going to Argentina. The buyer had flown in on a business trip and wanted to pick up my camera while he was in Canada.
So all in all, a very good camera, but reliability wasn't as great as I hoped.
Shots taken at the Guggenheim in New York City with the D2X and a Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 lens.
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