Okay, so a few weeks ago, I wrote about my first impressions with a few Canon DSLR-based cameras and one Nikon DSLR-based camera. If you read that post, recall that I preferred the Nikon D50 over both the Canon Digital Rebel XT and XTi and at the end of that article, I mentioned the Nikon D40, which was announced but not yet released to the retail market. Well, guess what? The Nikon D40 came out close to the start of the month and I’ve been wanting to get my hands on it for a while.

So, seeing that it’s been over two weeks since the Nikon D40 came out, I decided to head on over to the camera shop close to work to get a hands-on impression. Turns out the store didn’t carry it but it did carry a Nikon 55mm-200mm lens, something I’d never seen in person before. Wow, it looked soo cool! Anyway, back to the point. The salesman was kind enough to check if the Eaton Centre branch had the Nikon D40 kit (camera + stock lens) and it turned out the the Yonge/Dundas branch had 6 of them.

Not wanting to go to the big store on Yonge/Dundas, I went to the branch that’s in the Eaton Centre, the same place where I tried out the Nikon D50. To my delight, they had a Nikon D40 sitting up on the shelf and I asked to get my hands on it.

The first thing I noticed was the bright viewfinder. It was something you have to see for yourself. By far, the brightest viewfinder on a DSLR-based camera I can remember using. It also felt much lighter than the Nikon D50 and I confirmed this feeling by asking the salesman to pull out the Nikon D50 to refresh my memory. I preferred the grip of the Nikon D50 but its viewfinder paled in comparison to it’s replacement, the Nikon D40. The LCD on the new model was large and of excellent quality and I also got to see the cool graphical representation of the aperture opening and shutter speed I’d read about in a review. It was cool but not as cool as I’d expected.

All in all, I think I’ll have to have another go at both cameras if I decide to buy one. Hmm…maybe I should try out the Pentax budget DSLR-based camera before committing to Nikon!