Disappointment with Digital Photography and the Nikon D1x

From Pedestrian X

I bought a digtal SLR last summer, a Nikon D1x. It's 6MP and is a professional camera. I've been using a Nikon Series E 50mm lens and a Russian Zenitar 16mm lens with the Nikon mount.

I'm not 100% impressed with the camera and lens combination I have, I'm not sure which issue I have is related to what, but here are my biggest issues with my setup. Of course since this is my first digital SLR, all of my comparions are with my Canon manual camera.

• The battery life is ridiculously terrible. I did a full refresh on one of my batteries and took it out this weekend and it was dead before I had shot 50 pictures. Carrying around 3 batteries in Nova Scotia and a laptop to offload pictures really was a pain. All 3 batteries needed to be recharged each night since I took about 400 photos a day.
• 400 photos a day is a lot, but can be explained by this: My light meter doesn't work really with my series-e lens or my zenitar lens. It's always off, so usually I have to bracket and take a bunch of photos of the same shot looking at the viewfinder to tell if I got it right. This is a big pain, perhaps I should get a D lens.
• Sometimes the photos aren't entirely crisp as I would like, although since I've had the camera serviced, this problem seems to have corrected itself.
• Converting a photo to B&W really has sort of eluded me, I find the photos I take and convert all seem sort of flat and it's hard to capture the same sort depth in the contrast that I enjoy with normal B&W film. Since I haven't really taken a photo class I have a hard time articulating what I mean. See this photo though? It feels like the contrast actual has enough grain that you could feel it on the paper if you ran your finger over it. I don't think I could ever get b&w photo from the D1X to look like this, even though I've fooled around with the brighness/constast and grain filter a lot to get this effect.
• I like the Zenitar lens for it's wide angle, but sometimes the curve is a little too gimmicky. I like fitting a lot into the shot, but I don't like a lot of the photos looking like they were taken with a fish-eye lens like this one. If the CCR/negative size ratio is 1.5:1, the lens should be effectively a 24mm lens right? I don't think 24mm lenses usually have the curve effect. Then on the other hand, I can't really fit anything into the shot with my 50mm series E lens, so maybe I should be using a different lens altogether.
• Traveling with the D1x is pretty much impossible if you are staying in hotels and walking around a lot. Carrying 2 spare batteries and charging them every night can take a lot of effort and has some frustration. Since my micro drive is only 1 GB, every few days I would need access to a laptop to transfer the images off the camera to free up room. Which is hardly light and easy going traveling.

(Most of this page is a copy of an e-mail I sent my friend Mark)