Nikon D2H eating a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D.
Nikon D2H eating a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D.
You read that right: Over three hundred and ninety thousand shutter actuations. This is the Nikon D2H, the first of Nikon's second generation of practical professional digital SLR cameras, succeeding the D1 series. It's a obsolete, massive, but violently fast digital camera.
(If anyone else has one of these with a crazy number of actuations, I'd love to hear from you, especially if you can beat my high score.)
Shutter actuation #390,255! (EXIF data
here.)
All-metal chassis (including the lens mount) and fricking huge. It's the largest 35mm or digital SLR camera that I've ever had in my hands. As in it's seriously, face-coveringly huge:
The colourful haired one hiding behind a D2H.
It's also heavy. The body, without a lens or battery (c'mon, Nikon, nobody's going to be carrying it around without a battery, so why give us that figure?) weighs 1,070g. Even with a teeny plastic lens like an 18-55mm DX, a running setup will weigh at least a kilo and a half. This is the kind of weight that makes shoulders ache and necks hurt if you spend as much time on your feet as I do. I cram mine (including 55-200mm DX VR, 18-55mm DX and 50mm f/1.8, and an Olympus Trip 35, as tight a fit as anything gets) into a tiny LowePro Nova 1 shoulder bag in between shoots, which makes it slightly more bearable.
Interestingly, the rubber grip seems to have grown over time, to the point that it no longer fits the camera properly, and made it impossible to turn the aperture dial. I fixed this with a craft knife and a steady hand (not mine!).
Liana. Nikon D2H at ISO 200, Nikon 50mm
f/1.8 wide-open at 1/2000, shutter actuation #381,256.
Focal plane shutter, top speed of 1/8000 (faster than anyone ever needs, even if you're shooting at base ISO in daylight at f/1.8). Shoots at a maximum of 8 frames a second. It's an impressive sound, if nothing else; almost, but not entirely, unlike a slightly quieter Praktica MTL3, on crack. Here's the D2H running at 8 frames a second (MP3 file)).
The above almost demonstrates how fast 8fps is. You can see it animated if you want; you could almost shoot a movie that way. Actually, Nikon did record an advert for the Nikon F5 by shooting the F5 at 8fps; you can see the video on YouTube over here. Few people really need 8 frames a second, but who cares, it sounds cool, which is the only reason why anyone but professional photojournalists, sports photographers and wildlife photographers bought these when they were new.
Flash sync is at 1/250. Wimpy, compared to the earlier D1-series, and even many of the modern much cheaper cameras, which synced at 1/500. It's the same as my Canon T90 from 1986.
Twiggy. Nikon D2H, 18-55mm DX at 18mm wide-open, ISO 200
at 1/160, shutter actuation #379,339.
At the heart of it all is a 4.1mp JFET sensor, designed by Nikon (most Nikon cameras use Sony sensors), with about a 1.5x crop factor over 35mm film. Hey, I don't know what JFET means either.
The Nikon D2H with a Series E 70-210mm f/4 manual focus lens from the early
1980s.
It's compatible with almost every Nikon lens made from 1977 (I say "almost" because I'm not sure how this will play with weird ones like the 24mm PC-E). It'll be perfect with any autofocus lens. Manual focus AI and AI-S lenses (including the Series E lenses, one of which is pictured above) will work in aperture priority mode, and even give you matrix metering if you dig through the menus and set your focal length and maximum aperture under "Non-CPU Lens Data". Don't bother with anything pre-1977; these lenses won't even mount on the D2H.
Ignore the manual focus lens in the picture above; that was just me being silly. I use two of Nikon's cheapest DX zooms (55-200mm VR and 18-55mm) and their cheapest AF lens (50mm f/1.8D) on mine.
Adele. Nikon D2H, AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D at f/2, 1/80
at ISO 200, shutter actuation #379,223
Read that 390,000 shutter actuations number again. That is insane by any measure. If I were to take pictures at the D2H's full 8 frames a second, I'd have to hold the shutter button for more than thirteen hours to get that number of actuations. That number, in case you missed it, being over three hundred and ninety thousand. Yes.
I wonder if that's some kind of record. Probably not, but there's only one guy above me in the Shutter Life Expectancy Database entry for the D2H, at 921,452, and right after he resubmitted with 92,152, which means he probably made a typo.
It's a little bit battered. And by "a little bit" I mean "really fucking":
(apologies for the crappy photo, I was rushing)
Awesome. Hey, if you can't be a pro, do what I do: buy battered cameras so that you can look like one! Few people can tell the difference, y'know. Camera archaeology is fun. Look at the worn area around the vertical shutter button and control dial on the bottom left, when there's not nearly as much on the top. This was evidently used a lot in the vertical position. I'm guessing a photojournalist who did a lot of people shots.
The USB port cover went walkies some time ago:
So yes, it still works, after more than three hundred and ninety thousand shutter actuations. Say hi to shot #379,339:
Twiggy. Nikon D2H, 18-55mm DX at 18mm wide-open, ISO 200
at 1/160, shutter actuation #379,339.
Everything about the D2H is fast. It's something that has to be used to appreciate it fully.
Autofocus is fast. It'll rip a 50mm f/1.8D, a slow screw-type lens, from its closest 0.45m focusing distance to infinity and back in about three quarters of a second. It's dead-on accurate all the time, too. I usually use it in single-area mode and continuous AF.
Operation is fast. Every adjustment you'd ever want in the field has its own dedicated adjustment button. Once you get the feel of it, you never have to think about the camera while you're shooting. Yes, there's a whole bunch of stuff buried in menus that you'll never use (hey, do you really need the setting to allow the camera to shoot without a CF card present?), but everything you need is right on tap.
The frame rate is OMG FAST. And even at its very fastest frame rate, the mirror returns so fast that it's not entirely difficult to track moving objects if you're paying attention. Also, it sounds awesome, as I don't tire of mentioning.
On image quality, well, it's an old camera. I hesitate to judge it by modern camera standards, and not just because I refuse to stare at pictures at 100% looking for flaws. It is rather noisy, doesn't handle highlights gracefully, etc etc, by modern standards. It's still a very usable camera if you use it properly.
Stripes. Nikon D2H with Nikon 55-200mm VR, shutter
actuation #381,447.
I paid £250 in 2009 on eBay for this, plus another hundred quid a piece on a 50mm f/1.8D and an 18-55mm II. I started out looking for a small, light and more modern camera like a D40. I got curious and ended up with this, which is the largest and heaviest man-made object in the world:
The Nikon D2H dwarfing a Nikon D70.
Yeah, so go me. :/ I think that's a little too much to pay for a D2H at all, let alone one whose shutter might explode at any moment. When that happens, I'll probably get a D1 for kicks. Heh heh. Really, if you really need 8 frames a second (or, like me, you like the sound of 8 frames a second), then go for it. If you have a sense of humour like me and just want want one for kicks, then get one too, but don't end up paying more than you should for a totally obsolete camera.
Sane people on a budget might want to think about picking up a two-years-newer D70, which is lighter, smaller, and has better image quality, usually for less money. (I don't like the later cheap Nikons because they lack buttons for ISO and white balance.)
Another sparrow. Nikon D2H,
Nikon 55-200mm at 200mm and f/7.6, ISO 200 at 1/250, shutter actuation
#379,900.
