Finding One Today
My first stop was EBay of course, with examples of the body selling for around $40, or with the kit lens for $60 or so. Shipping would take this to $80 but none of the cameras looked to be in great condition and were seemingly sold by non photography people who claimed they couldn’t test them properly or didn’t have the charger. Then there were some up at $400 with a couple of lenses and with ads clearly designed to scam the unwary into buying obsolete tech at an outrageous price without realizing it. The best option would likely be importing from Japan but they were going to cost me close to $140, too much for what the camera is.
Patience pays off however and I came across a local ad for $100. It came with two lenses, a bag (which I expected to likely need to throw away) and the battery and charger but with the charger cable missing and consequently it was being sold as untested. It all looked in beautiful condition, well cared for as it were, so I figured that it was worth a look given it was only an hours drive.
The camera and lenses were unmarked, the Nikon bag they had been stored in was clean and frankly new looking with no smells. I noticed the lenses were the later VR versions, which was interesting but I decided to gamble on a bit more discount from what was already a good price by pointing out the whole lot was untested and the battery having been left for so many years was most likely dead and showed them the price of a new one on EBay, offering them $80 cash. We settled on $90 and the kit came home with me. They told me they had sold another newer camera but the buyer didn’t want the lenses so made an offer on the body only while suggesting they sell them with this camera.
I later realized these lenses were much newer than the D40 and this explains why. More on that in a moment…
I essentially got the “twin lens” kit that would originally have retailed for $799 however with newer, upgraded versions of both lenses which are likely from around 2015:
- Nikon D40 camera body in flawless condition
- Nikon AF-S DX 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G VR ii lens in flawless condition
- Nikon AF-S DX 55-200mm 1:4-5.6G VR ii lens in flawless condition
- Nikon MH-23 battery charger – missing “figure of eight” power cable
- Nikon EN-EL9 battery
- Nikon DSLR shoulder bag in black and yellow – excellent condition
So if I were buying it all separately on EBay it would be around $225 according to recent “sold” prices, but more realistically, sold together as a kit, they have gone for around $180, however for that price the 18-55 would be the old non VR version. In any case, for $90 it seems I got a bargain!
But Does it Work?
I found a spare “figure of eight” power cable, charged up the battery for a couple of hours, popped in a 32GB SDHC card, crossed my fingers, flicked on the power switch and within a second the screen had lit up and was prompting me for the time. Once I had entered that in it said “lens not attached” which was worrying as the 18-55 lens was attached, but the I realized this version 2 of the VR lens collapses down for even easier transportation and once I had unlocked and extended it the error message went away. I took a few test shots at both wide and tele ends of the zoom range, changed the aperture, made sure it focused both distant and close-up and finally checked the VR was working (should stabilize the image when you half press the shutter) and all was good. I swapped over to the 55-200 and tested again and all seemed good.
There were a couple of dust spots in the viewfinder but they were easily cleared with an air blower and checking the sensor for dust did show maybe half a dozen but an air blower followed by a couple of sensor cleaning swabs had that down to two albeit in new positions. I’ll order another cleaning kit and see if I can get it totally clean.
I have no idea how much charge the battery holds given its well over 15 years old, but it shows all bars on the screen so that’s promising.
I checked the shutter count and it has a little over 9,000 which is well below the 50,000 expected lifespan.
This post is longer than I expected so I’ll run through the specifications in the next one…
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