Having spent the last couple of years using only an iPhone for my photography, I thought I'd take the old Nikon (bought new, 21st November, 2005) for a walk in the gloom of a rainy day.
Well, quite the experience! For a start, the weight of the thing on my past its sell-by frame, the difficulty I found trying to catch focus on static objects a few yards away, where I ended up watching for the tiny green focus indicator light to go on more than I watched the subject, all because I'd decided on a 2/35mm AIS manual lens and not one of my three longer autofocus lenses.
Such unfair challenges aside, I have to give the Nikon a plus for the greater ease of framing than the iPhones give me. It seemed steady as a rock in my hands, whereas those cellphone are not really all that brilliant to hold - especially the larger model. The light was pretty ugly, so no surprise the snaps look ugly too. However, the greater surprise came from discovering that I like the cellphone files better to work with in PS. I seem to have found a look from the cellphones, especially from the old 13 Mini, that I kinda prefer. That said, bad light challenges the cellphones, too, so perhaps not a fair comparison; I must wait for some brighter weather before going too negative on the D200. I remember it and the newer-but-now-dead D700 making some pretty good tones in the past. Perhaps I just have to adapt.
