“Having been a pro photographer and black-and-white printer since the mid-1970s – and having owned, published and edited a specialist darkroom magazine in the UK throughout the 1990s, I found the very thought of digital an anathema. Traditional darkroom work, as well as some alternative printing processes using hand-coated papers, was the be-all-and-end-all with me. Like being in the kitchen, the pleasure was and is, in the preparation and cooking rather than the eating.

However, when photographers the world over were moving to digital at the turn of the millennium, albeit to quite expensive 1-2 megapixel cameras, I knew the writing was on the wall for my magazine. What I didn’t forsee was that selling images would also become largely digital too. And I’ve been left in the cold... my toes have dipped into the water but I’m unsure how deep it is and whether to throw off my old habits and jump in!

Once I had made up my mind to try digital, choosing a Nikon D200 DSLR didn’t take much persuasion. I’ve used mostly Nikon cameras (all of their professional models except for the latest F6) for the best part of four decades... so I not only know where that particular make of camera’s controls are traditionally placed and how they operate, and therefore have a feel for them... I also don’t have to think about or look at what I’m doing when taking pictures. I also have a reasonable selection of very good manual and auto-focus Nikkor lenses, some manufactured 30 years ago, and which all fit the latest Nikon bodies.

This last point was very important for me. Old habits die hard and to have to learn opposite ways of manipulating camera and lens controls didn’t interest me at all... the only “automation” I like on cameras is how my hands and fingers work when I’m shooting. Auto-wind is OK I suppose... but I still try to “wind-on” film and cock the shutter as my other preferred cameras are the Nikon F2 and Leica M3 rangefinder... as I said, old habits die hard.

Where automation does help me is when using my old manual Nikkors I can dial the “focal length and maximum aperture” data into the D200 menu and fire away knowing that the camera’s computer algorithms are (presumably) honing the exposure for me. The main image of two walnut trees in the field at the bottom of the garden, made early this morning, only needed a quick data change to tell the camera I was using an old 500mm f/8 Nikkor-Reflex lens.

I bought the D200 from a professional dealer in Tours, France, where I knew that the staff wouldn’t engage me in banal sales patter (I’ve been behind a shop counter in the past so know the drill... make sure the customer also buys an extra zoom lens, rubber lens hoods and skylight filters for both the supplied kit and extra zoom, fancy embroidered neck strap, lightweight tripod which will need replacing after six months, nylon gadget bag that will prove too small... or so large as to encourage more purchases, and a couple of color print films – because the profit margins on the accessories bought in bulk by the dealer are much higher than on the camera itself – and counter staff often receive a bonus when a customer buys all those items as a “complete package” with a camera).