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Nikon D40

Digital Camera Review

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Testing / Performance

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Components
March 02, 2007 By Patrick Singleton
3 Comments
(add your own)
Front (7.0)
The Nikon D40 shares the standard stylistic touches of Nikon DSLRs: The Nikon logo is on the top of the viewfinder hump, and there's a small red triangle on the handgrip, just under the shutter release. Like the D50, D70 and D80, the D40 has a small chrome-tone badge at the upper right that shows the model name. There's an infrared sensor on the front of the grip, which is covered in a plastic gripping material. There is a large auto focus assist light between the grip and the lens mount, and a lens release button on the right side of the lens mount.
 

 
Back (6.75)
The 2.5-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD dominates the back. To its left, there is a column of buttons. From top to bottom, they are: Playback, Menu, Help/decrease magnification and Info/increase magnification. The viewfinder is above the LCD with a diopter control on the right side. The viewfinder is small. The auto focus/auto exposure lock button is between the viewfinder and the control dial on the right edge. The 4-way controller, located to the right of the LCD, is ring-shaped with an OK button in the center. The controller is a departure for Nikon, which usually uses a single dish-shaped controller that can be rocked up and down or side to side and pressed in. The D40 has a delete button to the lower left of the controller and a small light to indicate that it is recording an image to the SD card or running its noise reduction routine. The right side of the back is contoured nicely for the user's thumb with a ridge along the edge to improve the grip and an indentation above the 4-way controller.

 
Left Side (7.5)
The USB and video out ports on the D40 have a rubbery cover that is more durable and offers a better seal than a hard plastic door. Plastic doors are a vulnerable feature – they are much more likely to break than rubber covers. The D40’s port door is located on the back edge of the left side. Above it is a flush-mounted strap lug that is less likely to snag than lugs that poke out. It's not difficult to thread a strap through the lug.

 
Below the side of the pop-up flash and in front of the lug and port door are two small circular buttons. The bottom button can be customized to save any setting, but activates the self-timer as a default. Above that is a button that pops up the flash and allows flash exposure compensation.
 
Right Side (7.0)
Fancy Nikons – the D200 and up – have secure, easy-to-use locks on their media card doors. The D40 does not. Its media door, which is located on the rear edge of the right side, slides back and then swings open. The arrangement seems more likely to loosen up with wear than a latched door. There is a small flap where the right side meets the battery compartment door near the center of the bottom. The flap flips out of the way to make room for a power cord.

Top (6.25)
There's nothing to the left of the viewfinder hump on the D40. There's a hot shoe on top of the hump and a flip-up flash. The mode dial is immediately to the right of the hump. The exposure compensation button and an info button that changes the LCD display are also on top. The shutter release, which is good-sized and moves smoothly, is on the top of the grip, and the ring-shaped power switch surrounds it.

Bottom (7.25)
The metal tripod bushing is centered under the lens axis, and that is convenient for adjustments on many tripods. Unfortunately, the bushing is surrounded by hard plastic that will scratch up pretty quickly if the camera spends much time on a tripod. The battery compartment door opens up under the hand grip. The door has a latch so we expect it to last longer than the media card door.

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Nikon D40
Digital Camera Review
3 Comments
(add your own)

Previous: Page 1

Testing / Performance

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Components