This DSLR is currently (Feb 2007) the smallest and lowest priced digital Nikon SLR camera - in most countries priced in the range of the upper-class compact digital cameras. The camera incorporates a 6 Mega pixel sensor, has got the Nikon bayonet and claims to be the ideal camera for beginners, female hobby photographers (due to its compactness and light weight) and all those who want to have a very compact, easy to use digital SLR camera.
I had the opportunity to work with it for a couple of weeks and - to make it short - I do like it very much.

Again, as usual, I do certainly not want to repeat the technical specifications or marketing features which all can be found on the various websites of Nikon, of resellers and at other sources, what I want is to share with you my personal experiences and impressions together with some photographic results and evaluations.

Handling, menu and operation

There is obviously a fundamental difference between Canon and Nikon - clear, they are competitors and each one of them sees the world different. I personally always liked the Nikon way better (I had used also various Canon cameras in the past) and this new D40 continues the Nikon approach to menus, symbols, buttons, screens and knobs. It therefore took me only a couple of minutes to understand the D40 menu and its features and benefits.
Here comes the first plus for the D40 - its operations menu. It is clear, well designed and easy to understand - much better than others, I have seen before. The large 2,5inch LCD screen (230.000 pixel!) on the back side of the camera - it is really large for such an inexpensive camera - displays the menu very well legible also in bright daylight, the icons are logical, the menu itself is well defined and the step to step information available by pressing the help button is a very good idea and working well.

The body is very light in weight, with batteries just over 500gr - I am used to "real" cameras, so I needed to get used to hold such a light camera in my hands - not really a problem but a bit unusual for me. Despite the fact, that it is made out of "plastic" it does not at all look cheap or fragile - which was surprising to me. To me it looks more solid and more robust than other DSLR's of their main competitor - I guess that design and manufacturing team did a very good job. And one can shoot and shoot - the shooting rate is unlimited in JPEG at 2,5 fps - quite impressive for such a small camera! And the shutter - absolutely not noisy at all - very well damped and quiet! I was able to shoot inside of churches without that people turned their heads looking at me like saying - how dare you disturbing us here!

On the backside of the camera, left to the screen, there is a question mark visible above the lowest button - press it to see what one is doing - nice feature the explain the actual operation step. And the garbage bin on the right side of the screen allows to discard an image directly without pressing another button, which is also a very convenient feature in my opinion.
Another impressive ability of that little camera - after switching it on, it takes less than 0,2 seconds to be ready to shoot - that is nice, very nice!

Viewfinder and lenses for the D40

What a nice viewfinder for such an inexpensive camera! I was positively surprised by that viewfinder - quite large, bright and informative! Nice job, well done - don't forget, this is not a $ 1000,00 or € 1000.00 body - the entire camera with standard zoom is about half of that amount!
The D40 comes as standard equipped with a nice 18-55mm zoom lens, which is good enough for most normal photographic tasks. As the camera does not have the Nikon focusing motor built into the body, one can only use the AF-S and AF-I lenses.

There was a lot of noise made in various other reviews and journals about this fact and many writers mentioned this as a significant drawback. I do see this totally different - here my explanation why: The D40 is the entry level DSLR, comes with a standard zoom and can be equipped with lots of modern AF zoom lenses starting at 12mm focal length. So why leaving the focusing motor in the body? Who would be interested to use an older Nikon lens on such a small, lightweight digital body? If one would like to, then get the D50 or the D80 - not too much more expensive and a different class of camera. The buyers for the D40 are a different group of people and the vast majority of them does not want to use older Nikon lenses on that body, I guess. I might be wrong, but I am still convinced that this omission of the focusing motor was the right move in this case.

Features and battery life

Features - technical abilities, most of them for beating the competition and not used by many customers - there are a lot of them incorporated in the D40. Several image processing functions like D-lighting (contrast reduction system), image trimming, image overlay, overlay in general, monochrome B&W photography, sepia photography and others - nice algorithms which show what some people use as reason to buy a camera. Not important at all for me, but certainly a nice and appreciated advertising tool. What counts for me is the quality of the images taken with the D40, battery life time and color rendition.
The built-in flash with guide number 17 is fine for most group shots as long as one uses the standard zoom. As soon as a slightly longer lens is attached, the flash can produce vignetting on the image - especially at shorter distances. There is an additional smallish flash (SB-400, GN=30) which comes on top of the body which should be used in such cases - it is light, small and more powerful - a nice add-on to carry around in the pocket.
The storage media for the D40 are SD cards (up to 2GB) and as a positive move, also the SD-HC cards (up to 4GB currently). This makes it possible to walk into a weekend of shooting just with one card in the camera - if you like.
The battery life time is sufficient - not brilliant, but fine. Shooting with flash dozens of pictures in one go is not a problem, but maybe after one day of shooting, it needs to be recharged - as I said, not a problem. I guess the Nikon people used a 1000 mA battery instead of a 1400mA battery to save weight.

Color rendition, noise and White Balance

The standard color space of the D40 is the sRGB IIIa which results in rather colorful photographs, very green grass and very vivid images. This is certainly trimmed towards the US customers - in the USA, most people prefer very vivid colors, totally different from most European customers who prefer rather subdued, more realistic colors. This can be done, there is color space sRGB Ia and Adobe RGB available and the results with these color spaces are also more to my personal liking. The color rendition is something which needs to be adjusted to match our European taste - for me, the photographs are in general too colorful when using the standard settings of the camera. The difference between the two spaces is not earth shaking but visible, especially when the colors of the objects are very bright and clear - intensive red or green as example. I will show later on the results of the IMATEST evaluation - the color intensity "shift" is visible in those results as well.
Color noise - not really disturbing at higher ISO settings - that is one of the main and huge advantages of the larger sensor areas compared to those small pocket cameras with their mini-sensors. ISO 400 is very fine, ISO 800 is still fine, ISO 1600 and up - well, there is visible noise, of course, what else. 
The White Balance is surprisingly fine in the Auto-mode. Suitable for most daylight applications, not great in real incandescent light (like most other Nikon DSLR cameras). And as there are many variations of white balancing possible, even with fine adjustment, they allow to take perfectly balanced photographs. I guess that white balancing in automatic mode for a very wide range of color temperatures is something which is just too complicated to be done perfectly - maybe some do it better, some less but as long as I can do it manually, I have not got a problem with it. And as it is so often the case - colors are very subjective - often the true colors are not the ones which are appreciated most - appreciated most are often the most pleasing colors for a given scene and mood.
Another topic, which raised concern in a few reviews is the fact, that the camera settings allow for storage of combined formats - like RAW plus JPEG only for the JPEG file the base quality and not any other, higher quality. My opinion is that I either shoot RAW or JPEG and if I shoot RAW then I appreciate it to have a JPEG file as information - and for such purpose, the base quality is fine enough. I do not need to get a RAW file and a high quality JPEG file stored together, this is wasting storage space. As I said, that is my opinion, maybe others think different. I shoot RAW to get the best possible out of a shot and what I want usually is to optimize the RAW file and then store a high quality JPEG file after optimization (or for further image processing, a TIFF). You see what I mean - why that additional high res JPEG file - I would not need it if I shoot RAW. Or I can shoot JPEGs, then the scenario is clear - I want shots ready to use and do not care too much about further optimization.

There are certainly limitations in the list of abilities and/or features - like that there is no depth of focus preview and no exposure bracketing function but do the main users of this type of DSLR really need it? I mean, do they even know what these features mean? I guess - no. And they do not need it either. If I would get such a camera, I would use it with pleasure for taking shots on the weekend with friends and family, somewhere out in the woods when I do not want to carry my usually rucksack of equipment but still want to take good photographs and then I do not need such functions. And if I would see a necessity to bracket an exposure, I can it manually as well. And the depth of field preview - how often do you really do this before taking a shot? One time out of 100 or even less? I can hear some readers of this review telling me that they need it desperately and that they cannot take good pictures with that very specific not existing feature - so sorry guys, then spend a couple of hundred Dollars or Euros more and get the D80 if you like. I do not need it - for those applications, which I mentioned before. For others, I have got other cameras - Nikon, Mamiya, Rollei, Linhof....

Photographic Results
The results are very pleasing and surprisingly good. I expected to get quite nice photographs but not such good ones with that entry level camera. To start with, here a quick shot of the friend of my younger doughter - nothing special, this shot, just to show what it can do in a very simple setup

 

Another interesting shot shows that the standard optics, the 18-55mm AF-S lens is pretty good, actually much better than I thought it would be. The shot was taken downtown Vienna - one of the very typical nice old Vienna courtyards inside an old apartment building in the First District

Whatever one can conclude, in the daily amateur operation, the D40 produces nice photographs - a bit too colorful for my liking, but overall very good for a +/-$ 500,00 (+/-€ 500,00) body.

Of interest for users might also be to see how the camera behaves regarding noise - my conclusion is, and you can see it on the following photographs, that up to ISO 800, the camera behaves very fine, ISO 1600 is already revealing visible noise and the High gain setting is very noise - that is nothing unusual as it corresponds to ISO 3200 and if you take photographs with a ISO 3200 film, well, I guess you know what you get - grain and again grain