The Nikon D70s put a dent in my wallet... and my hardwood floor!

After dropping my Nikon F65 35mm SLR down a scree slope, and then more recently submerging it in the Pacific Ocean, I thought it might not be a bad idea to get a new and improved camera – a digital SLR. At the same time, I was hesitant to go and spend over a thousand dollars on something that I seem prone to dropping at the least advantageous times. After mulling it over, I finally settled on a Nikon D70s 35mm dSLR kit. Sure enough, on the second day of owning it, it somehow fell off of my tripod and landed on my hardwood floor. Damn.

My floor sustained the most evident damage, with two large gashes from the 5-foot fall. The camera landed on the lens, bending and breaking off a small piece of non-functional plastic. After picking it up, I looked closely for any damage to the visible vital components, but saw nothing. Finally, I hit the shutter release button and discovered...


What? You want me to finish the story of destruction already?
You know I can’t do that. Instead there’s the issue of how I decided on the Nikon D70s dSLR.

As most potential buyers will be quick to discover, the Nikon D70s (which replaced the Nikon D70 with a few small improvements) receives the majority of competition from Canon’s Digital Rebel XT/EOS-350D and EOS-20D. The consensus is that all three of these cameras are excellent options, leaving the matter really to figuring out what you want to do with the camera. The Digital Rebel XT has the advantage of being the cheapest and even has more megapixels than the D70s, but it also has a rather poor lens that more than cancels out the advantage of those extra megapixels, making it more of a competitor for the Nikon D50. The EOS-20D is more in line with the Nikon D70s, and perhaps even a little better when it comes to the pictures it takes. However, it is also more expensive.

With my budget being one of the biggest concerns, I was reluctant to go with anything more expensive than the Digital Rebel XT, but still wanted a mid-level dSLR. Given that I was already familiar with Nikon SLRs and had a Nikkor Zoom Lens that’d only be compatible with another Nikon product, it made the most sense to stick with Nikon and get the D70s. I’m happy that I did.

New to dSLR cameras?
If you’re like me and this is your first digital SLR, there are a few things to be aware of that differ from film SLRs and point-and-shoot digital cameras. First off, even when you purchase a dSLR in a kit, it likely won’t come with a memory card – so be prepared to spend another $100 on a high quality memory card. Secondly, the focal length of lenses is magnified by 1.5X, meaning your 300mm lens now zooms up to 450mm. However, that also means wide-angle lenses aren’t quite so wide anymore. Finally, you must look through the viewfinder to take pictures, as the LCD screen can only be used to review photos and/or change settings.

The Most Important Detail: Does it make you look good?
Some people seem to like all-black cameras and associate them with “professionals,” but I’m not one of them, and unfortunately that’s the only way the D70s comes. But more than that, what has taken some getting accustomed to is the increased weight and size of this over my Nikon F65. By no means is the D70s cumbersome, but since I do a lot of backpacking, I would have preferred something a little lighter and smaller. Plus I couldn’t find an appropriately-sized soft camera case and ended up with a LowePro TLZ 1 that takes up twice the space of my F65’s LowePro TLZ Mini.

Figuring it Out
Given that I had long since figured out the Nikon F65, it made the transition to the D70s extremely simple. The layout of buttons is much the same, with a few extra buttons here and there, but the symbols and way things function are all quite similar. It only took a few days before I had almost everything tucked away in the back of my head. Anybody else coming from a recent Nikon camera will likely find it just as easy to figure it all out. If you’re completely new to Nikon, you will find the manual does a really good job of explaining how to use the camera and what everything means. None of the buttons or dials are ridiculously small and the layout is well thought-out and user-friendly.

Focus
Rarely, if ever, have I had the need to switch to manual focusing. The Auto Focusing works well, with the 5 focusing points visible through the viewfinder. It’s also quite quick, allowing you to take up to 3 frames per second, all in focus. Supposing you wanted to focus in on a flower in the foreground, but wanted blurry mountains dominating the background, you can opt to only use one of those focusing points. Alternatively, and my preferred method, is to make use of the Focus Lock, which will focus in on the subject and then stay focused on it while you reframe the photo. All you have to do is keep on lightly holding down the shutter release button once you’ve focused for the Focus Lock to stay on.

LCD Screens
The 2.0” screen is nice and bright, with the option to change the brightness in the menu system. The colours seem fairly accurate if you hold the camera at the right angle. Unfortunately, suffering like most LCD screens in the sunlight, it’s difficult to make out anything on the screen during the daytime. Fortunately, the backlit LCD on the top of the camera that tells you everything you need to know is always easy to read.

Menu Navigation
It doesn’t take long to figure out the menu system, and most of the settings you can adjust through the screen only need to be adjusted every once and a while. Nearly all of the settings that apply to taking a picture at that very moment (aperture, shutter speed, etc..) can all be quickly adjusted by various dials.

Flash
Given that nearly every picture I take is outdoors, I‘m a natural lighting kind of person and don’t like any sort of flash. For those rare occasions when I do want a flash, I’ve found the built-in flash to be excellent, making for some absolutely stunning portraits that really capture the detail and colour. Better yet, I’ve yet to take a photo and be forced to deal with red-eye.

Shooting Modes
The main shooting modes for the D70s are Automatic, Landscape, Portrait, Close-up, Night Landscape/Portrait, Continuous, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual; they are all explained in the manual. One thing that really bothers me about the D70s is that without buying a special remote, you cannot release the shutter for an indefinite amount of time and then come back later to close the shutter – a feature that my $500 F65 had. Instead, you must sit/stand there the entire time and hold down the shutter release, which is completely unrealistic if you want to leave the shutter open for a long nighttime shot. I’ll probably break down and spend another $50 to get the remote, but I’m not happy about that.

Processing & Connectivity
Images are quickly processed (up to 3 shots per second), and at their largest and finest settings typically come in at 2.5 megabytes in JPEG format. You can also choose to have a RAW format created in addition to the JPEG. To transfer the files to a computer a USB cable hooks into the side of the camera and gets the job done fairly quickly, with the option of deleting all of the files on the camera once the transfer is complete. Above the USB slot is the Video Out slot, allowing you to view and navigate your photos on a television.


Photo Quality
I’ve been impressed by the quality of photos. It may *only* have 6.1 megapixels, compared to the 8 that similarly priced dSLRs have, but that difference doesn’t show.

My first real test of the camera was in early spring, when I went out to the mountains to try and get some nice winter scenes. Of course, the last snowfall had been about a month earlier, leaving the ground dry and brown. So much for seeing how the camera could handle bright white conditions….
Nevertheless, I did eventually find some snow, and wasn’t happy with the photos. The combination of snow and the bright mid-day sunshine was too much for the camera to handle at ISO 200 with automatic settings, leading to some rather washed out images that couldn’t be salvaged. However, simply changing over to entirely manual settings made it easy to get past that issue.

A better test of the D70s power came at the end of April when I went to Puerto Vallarta and San Francisco, offering a lot of variety in shots I could get. Colours were absolutely phenomenal with all of the flower shots I took, although sometimes a little dark. Colour wasn’t quite as impressive with landscape shots, but with just a tiny amount of touching-up on my computer, the saturation and brightness really brought some photos to life. Nearly every picture I’ve taken has also needed a small amount of sharpening.

But don’t be letting all this talk of photos needing things scare you off, as the photos are of excellent quality and could get by without having any touch-ups. It isn’t until you play around in Nikon’s included PictureProject software or in Adobe Photoshop that you begin to notice these small little details. You won’t ever look at a photo’s quality and be left wondering why you paid so much for this camera.


Durability
Now to bring an end to the suspense from earlier, I released the shutter and found everything to be completely functional. Despite a hard fall, my D70s is in perfect working order, without the need for any repairs and nothing more than a tiny bit of damage on the plastic surface of the lens. Hopefully that will be the end of my bad luck with cameras.

As for how the D70s will last in the long run, that remains to be determined. It’s a very solid camera made of high quality materials, so I’m not worried about it crapping out on me any time soon. The biggest worry of mine is how long the digital components will last, as I would like to keep this camera for 10 problem-free years at the minimum. However, Nikon has yet to give me a reason to think they do shoddy work, so I’m not going to be anxiously awaiting something to go wrong.

Should something go wrong, I can rest assured knowing that Nikon’s wonderful warranty does its best to ensure that it will not cover any problems that could potentially happen on the planet Earth or elsewhere in the known Universe.


AF-S DX Nikkor 18-70mm (f/3.5-f/4.5) G IF-ED Zoom Lens
All of the praise I read for this kit lens was deserved. The images it churns out are perfect whether you’re at the telephoto end of things or taking some wide-angle shots. There aren’t any dark edges or corners, with the images being uniformly crisp and clear. I would still like to get a super wide-angle lens, but that’ll have to wait until the day I become rich.


What Else Comes in the Kit?
In addition to the D70s body and the AF-S DX Nikkor 18-70mm lens, the normal kit comes with a Lithium-ion battery (which still shows full strength after 4 months of light use), battery charger, USB cable, video cable, neck strap, PictureProject software, manuals, and eyepiece & LCD screen covers.


Price
I purchased the D70s body and AF-S DX Nikkor 18-70mm lens back in February for C$1350, plus taxes. Deals online didn’t seem much different, and in the time since the cheapest price I’ve seen for a new D70s kit is C$1280. The only necessary extra is a memory card, where I opted for a 1GB CF card that has worked out great. If you just want to buy the D70s body, it’s generally priced at C$900. That’s still a hell of a lot more than a comparable film SLR, but reasonable as far as digital SLRs go.

Canon Digital Rebel XT EOS-350D kit (body only): $1050 ($900)
Canon EOS-20D kit (body only): $1950 ($1300)


Parting Thoughts
The camera you buy really just depends on what you plan to do with it. Over the next few years I’m going to start trying to market some of my photos, and while I never plan on becoming a professional photographer, I wanted something that wouldn’t hold me back. Factor into the equation that I already had Nikkor lenses, and the Nikon D70s kit seemed like the perfect fit. Perhaps some day I’ll want to upgrade to something a little more advanced, but for the foreseeable future, the D70s has all I want and more.