Guess what we had for Christmas.... (Nikon D70)

Name: MaryanneH

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Product:	Nikon D70
Date:	19/08/04 (622 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great camera

Disadvantages: Does not come with a card

And Birthday, Easter, Mothers day, Fathers Day etc.

Yes the Nikon D70 is a serious piece of kit, and we have been after one for ages. The delay was not restricted solely by price, as there is a serious shortage of these cameras available in the UK (possibly world wide) and if you are lucky enough to find the body, the lens that everyone wants is even more scarce (more about that later) so that?s the availability, pretty much impossible, we eventually found ours in a small shop in Inverness, and I did see one in Oban but before you all rush up there that was a week ago last Tuesday.

Now the other thing with SLR cameras (digital and analogue) is that you can not guarantee that they will come with a lens, ever since we started getting serious about photography we have always had Nikon (starting with the 401 then moving to the F80) and Nikons lenses are on the whole interchangeable between cameras, but the 401 doesn?t fit the F80 so it is always worth checking before you buy.

One of the first things that you find out when you switch to a digital SLR is that the focal length of a lens on the digital is equivalent to 1.5 times that of the same lens on a standard SLR camera. This means that a 18-70 lens fitted to a digital camera actually works like 27-105 lens. It is because of this that the lens everyone wants for the D70 is 18 ? 70 DX lens, which gives the best field of close vision on the camera, but because of the shortage of them at the moment if the camera comes with a lens at all it may well be the standard 28 ? 70, but I?ve compared them and honestly it is worth spending the extra and looking around to get the more popular digital lens. It doesn?t interchange down very well though, we tried the 18 ? 70 on the F80 and it just didn?t work, you get a permanent black ring around it, ev
en on the higher settings.

We bought the camera as a kit with the 18 ? 70 for £999.99 and the very nice man gave us a polarizer filter to go with it, because whilst the lenses may be interchangeable between cameras, the circular filters are not interchangeable between different sized lenses, there are scientific reasons for this they?re not just trying to get you to buy more, honest.

So down to the nitty gritty Why chose it?

Its lovely, now I?m not going to go into the whole technical spec of it, partly because my husband is the techie and I don?t understand a lot of it, and secondly because if you are serious about getting one you will already have checked the Nikon site (www.Nikon.co.uk) and if you are just thinking about it, it will make a very boring review.

But the highlights of the camera are:

6.1 mega pixel digital processing, which makes for really good sharp images, well that?s what the site says and guess what ? its true, you can also substitute quality for quantity if you know what you want to use the images for, so if you know you want to blow it up and frame it you can use the maximum but use all your memory doing it, but if you just want little images for email, you can do that to and get loads of them on, but even the little images are good quality.

This is broken down into 3 different JPEG formats (Fine, Normal and Basic) and NEF raw (the original picture) which gives the better photo. The only problem with using the NEF format is that there are not many programmes that will recognise it. The camera came with a trial version of ?Nikon Capture?, which you would have to buy completely to use on an ongoing basis. Photoshop CS also supports the format but isn?t exactly the cheapest programme on the market.

There are 7 digital vari-programme modes to help make picture
taking easier:

? Auto, for your regular snapshots ? but if this is all you want to use, seriously save yourself a few hundred pounds and get something else.
? Portrait ? which automatically gets the main subject to stand out whilst softening the background
? Landscape ? enhances lines, outlines and colours
? Close up ? for doing close up shots of flowers and stuff
? Sports ? extra fast shutter speed to catch the action
? Night landscape
? Night Portrait



As with all digital cameras you have the LCD screen on the back, which comes with a nice little cover to protect it from scratches. Now you can?t use the screen to line up the photo you have to look through the view finder (or if you can I haven?t worked out how yet) but then you get to view it, it also seems to be able to work out whether you?ve taken a portrait or a landscape perspective, not sure how but its very clever. You then naturally have the option of deleting pictures, or you can lock it if you want to make sure you don?t delete a particular image by mistake.

The website lists as a key feature ?Photographic and Digital technology are optimally matched for a quick response? now this is possibly the most exciting aspect of the camera as the possibilities are endless. It is incredibly quick to start up and focus. Shutter speeds can be set to values between 30 seconds and 1/8000 of a second. Apparently it can catch the wings of a humming bird, we?ve not been able to try this yet due to the absence of British humming birds but I?m looking forward to trying out that particular feature.

Anyone that has done any form of landscape photography will be familiar with working out depth of field readings to enable you to get everything in focus, how often do you get pictures where the fourth blade of grass on the left is beautifully focused and everything
else is a varying degree of blurry. The D70 has a ?depth of field? button which will show you what will be in focus based on the selected aperture setting.

The website again describes the camera as powerful but lightweight, this is true. I don?t like a really light camera as I like to feel that I?m holding something and the F80 was a bit too light for my liking. Having said that if you?re going out walking then you don?t want to be carrying really heavy equipment with you, which was the problem with the old 401, Nikon have definitely got it right with this one.

It does automatically work out exposure and everything for you on auto mode, but if you force it to take a picture that is too dark you?ll get absolutely nothing. However, being digital you don?t have to wait weeks for the photos to be developed so that you can find out.

The battery takes a few hours to charge up, which is normal for any batteries, and it does come with a charger.

Now I?ve always been very loyal to Nikon, and anyone who is used to Nikon will have no problem getting started with this as all the traditional buttons are in the same place, and even for a techno idiot like me the digital additions don?t take much getting used to.

So are there any down sides other than the cost of it all?

Well it doesn?t come with a memory card so you can?t play straight away, unless you knew that already and had one ready. Other than that, no, I certainly have not come across any downsides.

Thank you for reading; this is the first ?techie? review that I have written so I am looking forward to your comments with some trepidation.

Capital letters courtesy of: http://www.chuckleweb.co.uk/fixit.php

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