Hello,
I have been using many SLRs for years and now I want to use DSLR.
It will be the Nikon D50, so I can continue to use all my lenses.

What are the aspects that will change with a digital I need to consider?

For example, can I still change the aperture from my lenses? I mean, in analog, it changes the amount of light that comes on my film. But what about digital cameras? There is no film anymore.

I also heard, the focal distance is different on digitals? So when I use e.g. a 28-80mm lense from my analog, what would that be on a digital?

The ISO I know already from compacts, you can change in your camera.

Thanks for your help, and if there are other aspects to consider, please let me know!

(I hope I got all the technical terms right, I can't really talk about cameras in English ;-))

if not english, what is your language ?

for a better place where to ask :

megapixel english

megapixel français

allemand

What camera are you coming from?

I shoot the D50 and am more than happy with it. I came from the same situation as you, had much money tied up in Nikon system already, bought the body only D50. If I had the money, I would have bought the D80, but I couldn't justify the $$.

Aperture works the same, though depending on what kind of lens you are bring to the digital, it may work differently. If they are AF lenses you should be OK, but if they are older AIS lenses you will be forced into shooting differently. All of the AFD and newer lenses have an aperture "lock" setting, which is at the highest F#, this will allow the camera to set the Aperture rather than the lens.

The main thing you will need to adjust to, and this will depend on how involved you were with film (developing, post-processing, etc), is that you can have a lot of flexibility at your fingertips. With digital, you can shoot push-pull and adjust after off camera in software. You can also bracket without eating up film, and you can be a bit more free with your experimentation.

Other than that, the digital image sensor *IS* the film, not much else has changed...it works just like an SLR.

As for the change, it is actually the lens to film/lens to sensor crop factor that has changed and it varies from camera to camera. With the D50, the ratio is 1/1.5x which means that if you have a 100mm lens, and you attach it to a DLSR, the resulting image is that of a 150mm lens (100 x 1.5x). The reason is that the Digital sensor is smaller than the frame of film and some of the original image that would have been on the film frame, has now fallen outside of the size of the digital sensor.

This has both good and bad sides to is. The good, is that your once 100mm 2.8 lens is now a 150mm 2.8 lens, which would have cost much more in to buy in the film world, also your 100-300mm lens is now a 150-450mm lens, so you gain on the zoom lenses. The downside is that your 15mm lens is now a 23mm lens, and it is going to be very difficult to get that true 15mm back without spending some $$, so you lose on the wide angle lenses.

Your 28-80 lens is now essentially a 42-120 lens.

I would also recommend staying clear of the kit lens, saving the 100$ or so dollars and buying a better prime lens, mainly the 50mm 1.8, that is if you don't already own one.

That's all I can think of now...

Thank you a lot, you really wrote quite much!
I mainly use the F90X.
For the Nikon body, thats excactly what I thought. I already have the 50mm, too.
The problem with the wide angle lenses is really quite a downside, since all the wide angle lenses I possess seem to be quite "normal" with a DSLR.

The photos in Vangelis' blog where taken with a Nikon E775 digital camera.