I’ve previously written about the limitations of the Nikon D60: the comparatively poor ISO performance, the limited lens compatibility, and the slow flash-shutter sync.  After my first few months with the camera passed, I realized the camera’s limitations; and I became fairly frustrated with my choice.  Fortunately, I made a decision that rectified my error: I purchased the AF-S Nikk0r 50mm f/1.4G.

The AF-S 50mm f/1.4 allows you to freeze the moment.

What I learned from my trials is that it is not the quality of the camera that creates a magnificent picture, it is the skill of the photographer combined with the lens that he uses.  With the AF-S 50mm f/1.4G I am able to take stunning portraits, low-light street shots, and exciting indoor sports action shots. Any dissatisfaction that I find with my pictures while using this lens is my fault, and it is not the fault of a poorly designed camera or lens.

The power of this lens rests in its gigantic aperature. So much light will hit the sensor of your camera, that the distinctions between 1600 ISO and 3200 ISO cameras begins to disappear.

The AF-S 50mm f/1.4 is the perfect lens for indoor basketball.

The lens’s large aperture also allows for the generation of pleasing bokeh (the blurry background of a potrait) around human and animal subjects.  You can easily create a stark contrast between the subject and background when operating this lens in dynamic area and single area focus mode.  It is possible to get these types of shots with a kit lens, but a shot will be achieved with trial-and-error.  A properly configured Nikon DSLR equipped with an AF-S 50mm f/1.4 will instantaneously and reliably takes beautiful bokeh shots.

The final positive aspect of this lens is that it works great with Nikon’s smaller, entry-level DSLRs such as the D60, D40x, and D40. In order to save size and cost, an internal focus motor was not included in these cameras.  Since the 50mm f/1.4 has the AF-S specification, it is equipped with an in-lens silent wave motor.  The lens operates more quietly and more quickly than the old AF versions of this lens that rely on the internal motor.

The 50mm f/1.4 can generate portrait shots with pleasing bokeh.

I’ve used this lens extensively when taking shots for my school’s yearbook. My favorite aspect of this lens is that the large aperture allows me to use the fastest shutter speeds.  The end result is surprising indoor sports images that show fast motion action frozen in time. Parents and students adore these pictures and frequently ask for more.

One serious limitation of this lens is that it has no zoom.  I knew this when I purchased it, but when I loan this lens to students it frequently disappoints them. Lack of zoom also means that this lens is not good for distance shots and it probably is not what you need for outdoor action shots. On the other hand, indoor shots in environments that allow you to get close to the subject can be amazing.

The AF-S 50mm f/1.4 has a shallow depth of field which makes it easy to get a poor focus.

There is also a high possibility that casual photographers that use this lens will produce worse pictures than they might with a kit lens.  If you don’t carefully correlate the ISO level with the available light or properly adjust the aperture, your pictures will appear fuzzy or overexposed.  There is also a high likelyhood that you will accidentally focus on the wrong object.  The object that someone is holding may be in focus, but the subject’s face may be blurry. The 50mm f/1.4 is not for someone who wants to point-and-shoot, but rather people that want to constantly tweak their cameras and their photography skills.

The 50mm f/1.4 generates pleasing bokeh in portrait shots.

You can help support this site by purchasing this lens through my Amazon Associate’s program.  Please remember, you must click the link and purchase for me or this website to benefit.

After I accepted the assignment as the faculty yearbook sponsor, I had to learn the art of photography fairly quickly.  I invested in gear that would allow me to do the job, furiously began reading books to help me improve my technique as well as share that knowledge with my students, and slowly became proficient in my new found hobby and workplace responsibility.

However, after a few weeks I began running into a problem.  My four year old laptop computer simply didn’t have the disk space to store the archive of photos that I was accumulating.  I was also well past the two gigabyte limit set by my workplace system administrator.

Short of spending hundreds of dollars on a few extra external hard drives or spending over a thousand dollars on a new laptop, the best solution that I could muster was to select an online photo archiving service.  Fortunately for me, there are many of these available and many of them are free.

Hands down, the most well known service out there is Flickr.  The user base is huge, and it is backed by internet giant Yahoo.  You can upload 100MB of photos a month for free.  Their photo groups are an incredible resource as well.  Tens of thousands of people critique and evaluate photos, and dispense and discuss advice every minute.  Unfortunately there are drawbacks.  The 100MB limit is pretty shallow.  With today’s modern cameras you’ll be pushing it to add more than twenty pictures in a month. The free service also limits your ability to categorize and organize your pictures; you can only have four sets. Perhaps most audaciously, Flickr doesn’t offer access to your original files unless you pony up some cash.  They hold your original files hostage and only offer lower resolution, degraded versions unless you pay for their “Pro” account.  The bottom line is that for the service that I desired, free Flickr was not an option.  I would have to pay.  But then I asked myself the next question, “If I have to pay, is Flickr really the best?”

After a little research, I decided that the answer is an adamant “No!”

Once I filtered out some of the maturing, but not-quite-ready-for-prime time, services such as Google’s Picasa Web Albums and Zoomr, I discovered SmugMug.

SmugMug pages are infinitely customizable and sport an infinite disk space limit.  Each page can be given different themes, and if you’re a geek you can even modify the CSS.  You can have as many sets as you like, and and people with Power and Pro accounts can store video online. There’s also an option for a custom URL (mine is photos.cullenhartley.com). Plus, if you’re ambitious, you can sell your prints for a profit.

SmugMug makes it easy to store and share pictures from school events.

The only drawback of SmugMug is that you have to pay, and the price is nearly double what most photo services charge.  Whereas Flickr costs $25 a year (for only slightly improved functionality) SmugMug charges $40.  For the advanced features such as full length video and site-wide customization you’ll pay $60.  If you want to sell your prints online, you’ll pay $150.

But even if you opt for the most expensive option, you’re getting what you pay for.  No other mainstream site allows you to sell prints with the potential to earn profit.  No other site provides the extreme flexibility and amazing storage options that SmugMug offers to its customers. Moreover, it is easy to look past the high cost.  Had I decided to purchase two external hard drives (one for storage and one for backup), it could have easily cost me $300, and I would be the only person that could access the photos and content.  Now, I have access to a full featured website that allows me to keep backups and share photos with the world.

This service is also ideal for schools that want to make their photos available online for students and parents.  I have several galleries that I’ve uploaded for my workplace this school year. As a matter of ethics, I don’t make any money from these pictures.  However, if a large school created a policy that allowed school photographers to upload and sell pictures to parents and students, it could potentially add an additional school revenue stream and provide a service that would allow parents to save a lifetime of memories. Some might scoff at the thought of selling pictures of students, but yearbooks, newsletters, and class photographers have done this for years.  There’s no reason that this practice should not move into the digital arena.

Do you want a discount on the cost of SmugMug? If you sign up for a SmugMug account, you’re welcome to use my discount code.  By signing up, you get $5 off the cost of the account, and I get $10 deducted from my next renewal fee.  Please enter the following discout code when you purchase your account: wASFesjLdNPtM

The circumstances surrounding my decision to upgrade to a DSLR camera are dire and obscure: they started at a concert when the frustratingly dark conditions prevented me from taking a clear picture with my previously trusty point-and-shoot Kodak, became solidified when I was assigned the job of faculty sponsor for my school’s yearbook (I’m a teacher), and came to fruition when I followed the masses to Comex and decided amongst the consumerist frenzy to indulge my DSLR desire.

After a little research, I decided to go with Nikon instead of Canon. Like Indiana Jones walking across the invisible bridge,I made this decision mainly as a step of faith. I appreciate that Nikon typically has better support for legacy hardware, and in some cases Nikon is just a little less pricey. However, I have also read some articles that claimed that Canon has sharper image rendering and presents more vivid colors, and I’ve read other articles that disagree. My photographic eye is not yet sharp enough to see a distinction. I also consulted a few blogs (such as this one) and several Flickr groups. Based on the end result, I couldn’t determine if one brand really had an advantage over the other. At my beginner level of photography, I’m sure that it doesn’t.

The three Nikon models that were in my price range were the D40, D60, and the D80. The higher end models such as the D300 were simply too expensive. After testing each of these cameras at the booth, I ended up purchasing the Nikon D60. The package that I selected came with two lenses, the 18-55mm VR (vibration reduction) and the 55-200mm VR.

My first few weeks with the camera were happy and joyful. Purchasing the D60 was everything that I had hoped for, and I was completely at peace with my decision. I was able to easily adjust the manual settings and snap pictures that had previously been impossible for me. The form factor was perfect for my hands, and each picture was captured with a satisfying click of the shutter. But as I spent more time with the camera, I realized that these thrills would come with any DSLR camera and the D60 has some serious limitations. I now realize it would have been wiser for me to purchase the more inexpensive D40 or shell out a little more money for the beefier D80 or (now available) D90.

Even with its 18-55mm VR kit lens, the D60 handles panning quite nicely.

The first D60 limitation that I encountered is one that was entirely preventable and entirely due to my lack of research. One of the reasons that I decided go with Nikon, the company’s support for legacy lenses, is almost entirely invalidated with this camera. If you are getting this camera to use some of Nikon’s inexpensive, yet high quality lenses such as the 50mm/f1.8- forget it. The D60 lacks an internal focusing motor. (For the record, the D40 has the same limitation.) The old AF lenses will attach to the camera, but unless you get the newer (and more expensive) AF-S or AF-I lenses you won’t be able to auto-focus. I guess this isn’t a problem if you love carefully manually focusing your shots, but I find one of the great joys of any digital camera is the ease of focusing. Granted, you can buy the more expensive lenses, but you could also just pay more for your camera in the first place and get a model such as the D80 or D90 that has an internal auto-focus motor that supports these lenses.

The second frustration that I have with this camera is that it simply wasn’t designed to handle low light situations well. Taking any picture that requires ISO 800 or higher produces an inordinate amount of noise in the image. I’ve read that this occurs because Nikon decided to cram more megapixels (10.2) in this camera but sacrifice the quality of each pixel. The end result is that in low light situations the D60 may produce a larger image, but a camera with fewer megapixels like the the D40 would produce a higher quality image. As a consumer you can take your pick, but unless you are producing large posters or high resolution desktop wallpaper, you’ll probably want a clear image over a large image. Of course, a Nikon lover could also just get a superior camera like the D90 or D300 that stomps the punier cameras in both picture size and quality. The trick is, of course, you just have to spend more money.

Another light performance flaw in this camera is its limited flash shutter sync speed. Unlike the D40 which can use its flash and take pictures at up to 1/500th of a second, the D60 can only take flash pictures at half the speed, 1/250th of a second. The implication of this is that when taking pictures of hyperactive little kids or fast-paced sporting events, the D40 would do a better job than the D60. This is inexplicable considering that the D40 costs less than the D60, but I imagine it has something to do with the sacrifice in pixel quality for the increase in megapixels.

Another thing that I realized after buying this camera is that I paid for a lot of fluff in the camera’s firmware. The D60 has about a dozen ways to enhance your image or apply virtual filters while the images are still in the camera. It even comes equipped with a feature to render stop motion video. Unfortunately, few people will want to use these functions. If you are seriously into editing your photos you will undoubtedly use GIMP or Photoshop to edit your images; you’ll feel like you’re wasting your time manipulating the pictures on the D60’s modest little LCD screen.

One of the most satisfying aspects of taking pictures with a DSLR is the ability to isolate your camera’s focus. The D60 can do this without a problem.

But Nikon is proud of these features, and the feature that they boast the most about is something called “Active-D Lighting.” They’ve even designated a button for this on the top of the D60. In the manual it says the purpose of this feature is to “preserve details in highlights and shadows to create photos with natural contrast.” After using it a bit, I do think that Active-D Lighting presents a slightly better contrast, but it also slows down your camera as it takes pictures. And virtually the same affect can be achieved by using the camera’s “D-Lighting” image enhancement feature in post processing. My conclusion is that Active-D Lighting may be a good feature, but it certainly doesn’t need its own button. If Nikon had placed a button that allowed me to easily manipulate white balance, ISO sensitivity or AF servo, it would have been infinitely more useful because currently you have to poke around the menus on the LCD screen to adjust these settings.

After I purchased the pricey 50mm AF-S lens, I was able to utilize the full capabilities of the D60. If I had purchased a D80 or D90, I would be able to take the same pictures with a more inexpensive lens.

In the end though, I am satisfied with the camera. I’ve taken some great pictures and had some good times with it. Moreover, my knowledge of photography has increased exponentially during the past six months. It serves my purposes for the school yearbook, and with the 55-200mm VR lens I can take adequate concert and sporting event pictures. If you’re like me and a DSLR newbie, the D60 isn’t a bad choice, but it isn’t the best choice. What sold me on this camera was the quality of the lenses that came with it, but these same lenses could also be used with a D40. If I decided to buy an entry level DSLR again, I wouldn’t buy this model. I would get the more inexpensive D40 and try to buy a few used VR lenses, or I would close my eyes, grit my teeth, and spend more money to get a D80 or D90.

These photos and more are available for purchase at photos.cullenhartley.com.

I know that I discussed some of the limitations of this camera, but I still feel it is a solid camera and it has been good enough to use for the school yearbook.  If you decide to purchase this product, help me out by purchasing it through my Amazon affiliates program.  Please note, for the website to benefit you must click on the link.

This post originally appeared on Claudia.sg