After over a month of being on a wait list my new Nikon D200 is here and I LOVE IT! What a fantastic camera! Now I understand why the wait list was so long on these! I pre-ordered the camera right before Christmas time. At that time, the camera hadn't been released yet and there was already a long wait list for them. So, I added my name to the list and the retailers told me that they expected a shipment at the beginning of January. They were released at the end of December and the only place you could get your hands on one was on eBay but everyone was SELLING them for $400 to $500 OVER MSRP. I refused to pay that much more than MSRP so I waited.



Week after week went by and still no camera. The place where I ordered from said they had received a couple of shipments but everything was going to pre-orders ahead of me (they had close to 100 preorders). One day I get a call saying that they were getting in a bunch of Nikon D200 kits and would I like a kit instead? Well, I didn't really need the extra lens but I decided to get the kit because the wait list was MUCH shorter on the kits. They come in and mine gets shipped out. YEA! Or so I thought!



The box arrived a few days later, I signed for it and as soon as I picked it up, I knew something was wrong. The box was empty! I could tell it was empty as soon as I picked it up, I just didn't want to believe it. I opened it up and inside there is some plastic packing material, a packing slip/receipt and that's it! NO CAMERA!



I called up the retailer ASAP and apparently, they made some sort of mistake and shipped me an emtpy box! This wouldn't have been a problem except now they were out of D200 kits as well because they had all been shipped out to preorders!



ARGH! So I looked around and actually found another retailer who had some kits available for the same price! YEA! So to make a long story slightly shorter, here we are!



These are the first few "test" photos I have taken with the camera and let me just say that so far, it is amazing! The photo quality seems much higher than the D100 and I can't wait to really get the hang of it! I also purchased the Nikon R1 Close-up Speedlight system which I used in conjuction with my Nikon SB-800. I find that using the whole system allows me to produce a softer looking photo (not as much harsh, bright flash bounce back) and therefore shows the various different colorations on an animal much better.



Anyways, here are a few photos I took. Let me know what you guys think. These pictures have been resized but NOT compressed to preserve image quality so the files are slightly big.



Thanks for looking!



Caramel Albino













Lavender Albino









Clown









Lemon Blast - I love the purple on her head













Lesser Platinum









Here are a few photos of my new Nikon D200 with the R1 Closeup Speedlight system mounted on it. It has two smaller speedlights that can be mounted either on the lens like in the photos, handheld or mounted on a tripod. The smaller flash heads can be expandable up to 8 flashes. If mounted on the lens, you can rotate them 360 degrees around the lens and the flash heads tilt 180 degrees. The Nikon SB-800 controls the smaller flash heads remotely so everything is synced up wirelessly. It really is amazing and a lot of fun to play around with!














-----
Celia Chien

www.ExoticsByNature.com



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