When I was traveling last month someone emailed me an interesting question: if I had to pick just one camera to last me the rest of my life, which would I pick?
Given that I'm closer to the far end of my life than the near, that's not a silly question, nor is it for many of you reading this, who tend to skew older than the usual teen reading blogs.
I'm not sure I have a perfect answer to the question, but I do think we can narrow things down to declare a victor:
- Most of the consumer DSLRs fall into a gray area: I'm reluctant to say that they could last a lifetime. They certainly weren't built with that assumption in mind. Since I know I'm abusive to equipment, I pretty much have to let the D3100 and D5000 (and all their former cousins) off the hook. Repairing them if they broke could also cost more than the value of the camera, which means that you usually just replace the camera outright. That's sort of the opposite of "camera for life."
- Cases can be made for both the D3s and the D3x. I'd lean towards the D3s, as the things I need more resolution for I can often use stitching on. Certainly we have no problems with build quality here, the feature sets are full and useful, and the image quality on the D3s is hard to top unless you have to print really, really large.
- But the D3 bodies are big and heavy, and that's counting more and more against them as I get older. So a case could be made for the D700 (being the closest we can get to a small D3s at the moment). All my lenses work as designed, I'd have excellent but not absolutely best case image quality, and the build is good enough to withstand my dragging cameras through the wilds with abandon.
- If the DX lens collection were more complete and had all the alternatives I ever needed, I could consider the D7000. But it doesn't so I can't. But perhaps some of you can. The D300s doesn't make the cut because it struggles as you bump the ISO.
- The m4/3 bodies and the NEX-5 hold promise, but aren't there yet. The m4/3 bodies don't hit high enough on the image quality bar to be my "sole" camera, and the NEX-5 lacks lenses (see D7000).
- The Leica M9 appears tempting at first, but I think I'd miss telephoto options, really low light photography, and getting things framed exactly right in the field.
- Virtually all of the compact cameras just compromise image quality in ways that would annoy me for my "only" camera.
So, given the current situation, I think my choice would be a D700. Curiously, that's one of my cameras that I use the least. That's mostly because for any given purpose I can find something else in my gear closet that will get me where I want to get just a little better. But if I had to pare everything down to one, the D700 would be right near the top of my list as the jack of all trades.
I know a lot of you reading this think similarly. The D700 has proven to be one of Nikon's most popular serious cameras since the minute it first appeared, and with a modest reduction in price has stayed that way right through to today.
We'll find out how Nikon decided to update the D700 within a few months. I have to wonder if we'll still think of it as being the jack of all trades and the right balance for a one-camera user or not. Just adding pixels isn't going to work.