Is Nikon D70 Still A Good Camera

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Nikon D70
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Nikon D70

Nikon D70 and lens. This gratis website'southward biggest source of support is when you utilize whatever of these links, especially this straight link to this lens at eBay (run into How to Win at eBay), or at Adorama, when y'all get anything, regardless of the country in which you alive. Cheers! Ken.

August 2011 Nikon Reviews Nikon Lenses All Reviews

NEW: Retentivity Bill of fare and Download Speed Tests, featuring the D70.

NEW: Nikon D80 / D200 / D70 / Canon 20D / 30D Dissonance and Resolution Shootout

NEW: How to Use the Nikon D70: My Consummate Users' Guide

News about the D70

NEW: Nikon D70 vs. D200, D80, D50, D40, Catechism 5D and XTi

Detailed straight comparison to the Canon 20D here

Nov 8th, 2005: Battery Think.

INTRODUCTION back to top

The D70 was replaced past the nearly identical D70s in 2005. In 2006 the D80 completely obsoletes the D70s.

As of March 2014, my D70's plastic exterior is starting to go sticky.

As of Dec 2005 the almost identical D70s replaces the D70. Everything here, except for the screen size, still applies.

The Nikon D70 is the second all-time digital camera I've e'er endemic. I love my D70 to death. In December 2005 I got my D200, which is newer, more expensive, bigger, heavier, and fifty-fifty easier to use. Thus my D200 becomes my best and my D70 is second best. The D70s is still my top suggestion if you want an advanced camera and are concerned near price, size, weight and battery life. The D70 has a much longer bombardment life than my power-sucking D200.

I bought mine new in March 2004. Information technology fifty-fifty has some improve features and cleaner images than some fringe $five,000 professional DSLRs I tried at the time. Sure, the Catechism 1D-Mk II has some advantages, simply information technology'due south $4,500, has slower flash sync, weighs a ton and has more primitive battery organization. Honestly I nevertheless prefer the D70 for its better size, weight and faster flash sync. Everyone's needs vary, and for me I prefer the D70 to everything else digital, including the bigger and slower-syncing $4,500 D2X and $1,500 Catechism 20D. The D70 has many image quality and ease-of-utilize improvements over the professional $4,000 D1H I used to lug around, not but in resolution, just too in highlight performance and much better color.

The Catechism 20D at $1,500 (body only) tin exist a amend camera depending on your needs. If I shot sports or shot Catechism and didn't heed the weight, slower sync speed, slightly kludgier interface and less legible LCD I'd become for the 20D. Run into the explicit comparison here. I adopt the lighter weight, faster sync and ease of use of my D70. Your needs may or may non be dissimilar from mine.

I consistently impress spectacular 12 x xviii" prints from my D70 at my local Costco warehouse disbelieve store, even from Basic JPG files.

I like it so much I bought my ain at total cost before the rebate and that'southward what I use today. No one gives me any of this stuff for gratis. I ordered one for myself here, consummate with the xviii - 70mm lens; and I already own a D1H and a dozen other lenses. Yous also can go it here with xviii-70 lens or here without.

The text links I post to Amazon and Adorama are neat places to get your D70, only exist very careful of annihilation you lot meet in advertisements. Most cyberspace ads are placed automatically and real people don't always get to bank check them out first and scams do sneak in. I talk about some of the scam operations here and here. Specifically in that location is what appears to be a scam operation claiming to be in Finland with too-good-to-be-true prices with ever changing names like Digibest, Sunlitics and FineTronics that keeps popping up a lot of places and has taken money from people. Read this for suggestions about where I bought mine and easily how to avoid scams, and please permit me know if you e'er come across any more. The D70 is a very hot production so anyone offering any big discount is possibly a scam. Read those links for much more than.

Read the residuum of the review or worry about some nitpick if yous want (I and others tin and will always observe fault for something), merely I bought ane as an improvement over what I already owned. It's that skilful. I ordered with confidence even though I couldn't get it immediately, and Adorama and Amazon lets us return something if we but plain detest it, then in that location'southward no reason non to order one if you think you want one every bit I did. Call up that you need to have memory cards for it nigh which you tin can read here.

The D70 is a true DSLR and far superior to all the new 8 megapixel stock-still zoom lens cameras. I explain this here, which you should read if you lot are new to DSLRs equally well-nigh D70 owners will exist. The D70 is just like a movie camera and not clumsy, confusing or tedious like the fixed-lens digital cameras you lot probably already own are. Sadly no magazine or other review source has pointed out the huge differences between DSLRs and fixed lens cameras notwithstanding, so do read the article hither.

I plant the paradigm quality in my test photos at the common ISO 800 setting far better than the more than expensive Sigma SD-10 and much, much ameliorate than the five-times-as-expensive brand new Kodak Pro SLR/n! (I hope there was something wrong with the Kodak.) Those other cameras autumn flat on their face with visible noise at these very important college ISOs, while the D70 returns very clean images.

Forget the obsolete D100. The D70 costs less and is a far better camera. It is also ii years newer than the D100. The D70 is an absolutely brilliant camera and the second-least expensive DSLR from anyone. Exercise you really demand to read the rest of the review?

Sorry if my directness shocks y'all compared to other websites; I'yard not a commercial venture so I accept no advertisers or sponsors to worry about offending by saying what I retrieve. I'm just a photographic artist who's been working in digital for decades and no i is paying me anything to alter my opinions. I have no problem being honest when 1 production clearly outperforms others since I don't take to proceed whatsoever advertisers happy. This is a superior camera even though it toll several times less than some competitors.

The D70 was announced at the end of 2003 and more formally on January 28th, 2004.

I especially love the ease-of-use and pro-caliber 1/500 flash sync!

List price is $999 for body, and $1,299 with an fantabulous xviii-70mm lens.

Equally of January 2005 it's one of the most pop cameras of all time and normally in short supply. Since stores can sell as many of them as Nikon tin can ship no one has whatever reason to have to discount. I've never seen a discount from anyone, and all the discounts I've seen are from scam operations who never really take any to transport. I just got on a waiting list and my photographic camera appeared. Be very wary of fraud over the internet. Adorama and B&H and Amazon are fine, but be conscientious of the thousands of others offer these.

SPECIFICATIONS back to top

half-dozen megapixels (iii,008 x 2,000 pixels), same as almost every other DSLR. Also ii,240 x 1,448 and i,504 10 ane,000 pixel settings. JPG, RAW or both at the same time. Thankfully no TIF format, since it would only clog upward the bill of fare and slow down the photographic camera.

True CCD image sensor, not a cost-saving CMOS sensor as most other new DSLRs have today. This gives the D70 the ability to have an electronic shutter and much faster flash sync than almost other DSLRs recently introduced, including those five times as expensive. Aye, the D70 is twice as expert (ane/500 vs. 1/250) every bit the $4,500 Catechism 1Ds-II and Nikon D2X. These more expensive cameras are only using CMOS sensors and tin can only utilize the former focal aeroplane mechanical shutters, limiting sync speed. I'm a real stickler for fast wink sync as you should read here.

Standard DX size CCD, 16 x 24mm. This is ameliorate than Catechism, which tends to have slightly unlike sized sensors in each SLR so you lot'll become confused if you lot use different cameras at the same time. This standard sensor gives a one.5x ingather factor compared to the obsolete 24 10 36mm 35mm picture aperture. You tin can get ultra-wide shots with Nikon'south 12 - 24mm lens, unlike with Catechism where you lot would need the $8,000 1Ds since Catechism makes no extra-short zoom for the 10D or Digital Rebel.

You tin read more almost why the DX sensor is the perfect size and unlikely to modify here. I bought a D70 and the 12 - 24 mm lens with my ain money at full price, so I certainly am not expecting any Nikon digital SLR to revert back to the old 24 10 36 mm film discontinuity.

ISO 200 - i,600, excellent. Why no ISO 100? Uncomplicated: the only reason for tedious ISO speeds in the old days of picture and in digital point-and-shoots was to become great colour and no grain. I explain why compact digital cameras however need ISO fifty and 100 here. The D70 gives such great results at ISO 200 in that location is no need for the older, slower speeds like ISO 100, 50, 25 (Kodachrome Two in the 1970s) and 10 (Kodachrome in the 1940s). If you desire to utilize big apertures y'all just shoot at i/eight,000 of a second. TRICK : y'all can shoot at ISO iii,200 and ISO 6,400 past setting the D70 to ISO ane,600 and -1 or -ii exposure compensation so either 1.) shooting in RAW and opening the files at +1 or +2 exposure, or 2.) just shoot in JPG mode and apply Photoshop's Levels or Curves command to lighten them! The curves command can give better results than an in-camera or RAW push button because you can innovate a valuable film-like shoulder to the bend to improve highlight rendition. That's right, you too could set the D70 to -3 or more than compensation for even higher speeds. Noise and image quality using this flim-flam is the same as other cameras set direct to these speeds. The other cameras with higher ISOs merely exercise the Photoshop magic in-camera for the aforementioned results.

Selectable long exposure noise cancellation (NR) style. Watch it, the camera but runs half as fast even at short shutter speeds when you set this. I wish the photographic camera were smart plenty to disengage this mode automatically at fast shutter speeds. You may or may not want to set information technology for time exposures and definitely want to leave it off (the default) for normal employ.

one/500 sync speed, superior to Nikon D2H, D100, Canon 20D, 10D, 1Ds and 1D-Mk 2 and every other consumer DSLR. Read why sync speed is so of import here. This is a critically important spec and a cardinal reason I would buy the D70 over the more expensive D100, D2H, Canon 1Ds ($eight,000), 10D, 20D or Digital Rebel. It actually works perfectly all the way up to 1/8,000 when used with any external flash, due to the D70's electronic shutter. Of course y'all'll lose a lot of light, and then Nikon doesn't put this out in the open to same themselves from having to answer all the questions.

White Balance is fully featured, meaning a full fine-tuning adjustment for each preset, typical for Nikon but painfully defective in Canon 10D or Digital Insubordinate. This is another reason to prefer the D70 to all of them. The ability to fine-melody each WB preset is very important to getting neat images and usually overlooked by photographers new to all this. This really affects your image quality far more than merely about whatever other specification for real photography in the field.

3 Frames Per 2nd, with almost a 12 epitome buffer. Actually Nikon pulls some clever tricks with file writing so at JPG NORMAL and with a fast enough card y'all tin can shoot continuously till the carte du jour fills up since it writes as fast equally information technology shoots giving nigh 144 continuous shots at 3 FPS. Personally, except for extremely insane sports sequences I find even 9 frames is always more than than plenty. The buffer is only four shots in the wearisome RAW format.

The camera-indicated buffer size at NORMAL compression is 12 frames at large JPG, drops to 7 images when set to JPG medium (2,240 ten 1,448 pixels) and goes up to 27 images when fix to JPG small (ane,504 x one,000 pixels). It is more than at Modest and less at FINE compression settings. This makes sense: it takes more internal retentivity for the algorithms to process the more complex non-integer size transform for the medium size, and information technology must take much fewer resources to scale the prototype by exactly one-half for the smallest size. Of course since the camera writes pretty fast you lot may not make full up the buffer at all and can shoot continuously at some settings.

Don't worry, the camera-indicated buffer says one thing while the very clever writing schemes are working in the background with the right cards. The dynamic buffering schemes are smarter than our power to effort to measure them the style we used to with all the previous static-buffer cameras, so just enjoy.

Built-in flash. more info hither.

Superior 1,005 segment color meter, same equally F5/D1X/D1H/D2H and superior to every other photographic camera and meter on the planet. Actually even though the hardware specs here are the same equally the F5/D1X/D1H/D2H I observe that the new firmware let this meter perform better than any other photographic camera I've e'er used, period. More here.

Immediate functioning, very skilful and very, very important. Everything on this photographic camera just works and works NOW. This is 1 of the many very pregnant reasons this photographic camera is far superior to slow indicate-and shoots like the Nikon 8700 and Sony DSC-F828.

5 area autofocus

30 seconds to 1/8000 second shutter with unbeaten 1/500 flash sync. 1/500 wink sync allows this camera to be used for serious professional portrait and action photography, unlike the other consumer DSLRs with slower sync speeds. There is an unlimited Time exposure mode available with the ML-L3 infrared wireless remote you can get here for $16.95.

Takes standard CF cards and microdrives.

Li-Ion EN-EL3 battery (aforementioned equally D100) and MH-18 quick charger comes included. Also yous tin utilize 3 CR2 batteries instead if yous use the included MS-D70 battery holder; admittedly fantastic! At that place's an optional EH-5 Air-conditioning adapter.

five.5" wide, 4.4" loftier, 3.one" deep (140 x 111 x 78 mm)
Weighs about 21 ounces (595 g)

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