Solid digital transition camera from 35mm film

I've had my D100 for about a year, transitioning from film (slowly) - my past cameras have included everything from an original Kodak 35 mm (circa 1960) to a Nikon F2AS. My primary shots involve outdoor and low light indoor environments, as well as family type events. Typical lenses used are Nikkors - 55mm macro, 24mm 2.8, 24 - 120 3.5-4.5EDVR and 70 - 300 4-5.6 ED.

Overall, I've found - after a bit of a learning curve - the D100 fairly straightforward to use. It feels for me like my old F2 with respect to shape and body weight, although there tends to be a bit more weight to the right. Others have mentioned the door covering the memory card. The camera functions and menus are fairly intuitive, although as a gripe I don't like the fact that there is actually a setting on the shooting mode (P - S - A etc.) that one CAN'T shoot a picture (ISO). As a person who uses the manual setting fairly frequently, and who manipulates the ISO, this can be problematic. Nevertheless, this is minor and has caused a lost shot only twice.

The viewfinder is bright, regardless of the lens used, and the viewfinder screens are 'changable' to a limited extent by using the menu. There is no perceptible shutter lag that I can tell, and the autofocus coupling responds quickly (although for those of us who have been manually focusing all these years, probably everything would seem quick). I've been impressed with the ability to see in very low light through the D100's viewfinder - it was much less bright in my old F2, and the overall range of ISO is reasonable for all sorts of light (although a 100 rating would have been nice).

Battery life is acceptable, although I note that trying to charge it by connecting the camera to the AC adapter hasn't worked well; it is much better and faster to take the battery out and put it on the dedicated charging receptacle.

Pics are very sharp, comparable to ektachrome 64 (but not kodachrome 25). I've been able to enlarge on a standard printer (using photoshop 6.0 on a lexmark Z55) to about 8 x 10 with reasonable results using TIFF and JPEG. I haven't tried using the RAW setting since I tend to use a lot of exposures fairly quickly - which gets to another gripe, which is the relative slowness of the cycle time with RAW images - it is LONG. Nevertheless, with my needs, TIFF and JPEG work well - with larger prints, however, I am not sure what will turn out.

Colors and (in contrast to other reviewers) exposure accuracy seems, at least in my hands, good, with pics being on the cool side. Most often I don't have to modify much with photoshop; again, quality and detail is good to excellent up to 8 x 10 with respect to sharpness with the noted lenses.

In conclusion, I've been very impressed with this camera - you need to spend an hour or two to play with it to get it to do what you want - I found once I had a question I went to the CD (since the owner manual was pretty mediocre), rather than reading it cover to cover. It is a good transition camera for people who take a substantial number of shots, but who are not professionals. I can't comment (as others have) on the software, as I don't use it as yet, but charging for it seems somewhat ridiculous if you've paid this much for the system.