DPreview.com: Nikon D70 Review

[GTaudiophile]

Read Here!

 

[dartworth]

Superb value for money, better still than the EOS 300D (Digital Rebel)

 

[GTaudiophile]

Seems like the better deal. Now it"s time to see how Canon will fire back.

 

[iwearnosox]

S400 > *.

 

[dman]

Very nice, but, the moire issue in some of those pics concerns me. I'd take the 300d over it if I was ready to buy, but, probably won't get one until the next gen comes out.

Any news on the Foveon 2nd gen stuff?

 

[Wallydraigle]

The 1/500s flash sync looks good.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Bumpage.

 

[DBL]

It certainly offers many thing the Rebel doesn't. No noise-free ISO 100 though.

 

[phantom309]

Take note, Canon - a $1000 digital SLR that actually looks and feels like a $1000 camera. I love the way my Digital Rebel works, but I HATE HATE HATE the crappy silver plastic body. It's like something you'd find for $200 at Wal-Mart.

 

[Anubis]

Mine got here yesterday, im gonna take a buncg of pics today cause its nice out, ill post them later

 

[edro]

Looks pretty good. I like the 1/8000 shutter speed and the built in noise reduction, even though it might be worthless.

 

[DBL]

Originally posted by: phantom309
Take note, Canon - a $1000 digital SLR that actually looks and feels like a $1000 camera. I love the way my Digital Rebel works, but I HATE HATE HATE the crappy silver plastic body. It's like something you'd find for $200 at Wal-Mart.

It looks like a more professional camera but the reports I've read say it doesn't feel like one. You know it's also plastic and perhaps only slightly better built than the rebel?

 

[rahvin]

Interesting review, some of the featrues are nice but I doubt I would ever use them. The lack of ISO 100, the moire and the gray blacks are deal killers for me. In almost every image I prefered the D300.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: DBL

Originally posted by: phantom309
Take note, Canon - a $1000 digital SLR that actually looks and feels like a $1000 camera. I love the way my Digital Rebel works, but I HATE HATE HATE the crappy silver plastic body. It's like something you'd find for $200 at Wal-Mart.

It looks like a more professional camera but the reports I've read say it doesn't feel like one. You know it's also plastic and perhaps only slightly better built than the rebel?

the d70 feels great in my hands, i have a N80 and the D70 feels more solid then it does, most likely because its a bit heaiver, i have used F100s and a N90x and the D70 has a feel more like the N90's and not quite the f100, it feels very solid and the Kit DX lens it comes with is also very solid, it preforms very well and it is really light, i suspect ill use it more ten my Sigma 28-70 f.2.8 because its signifigntly lighter, its also black which IMO looke more professional i hate the shiny silver Rebel

 

[MrScott81]

Originally posted by: Sifl
S400 > *.

thanks for the laugh

 

[Wallydraigle]

I saw this website a while back where these people were taking all the body pieces off their Rebels and painting them black. They looked pretty good when they got done, but the lettering never quite looked right. I'll see if i can find it.

 

[DBL]

Originally posted by: Anubis

the d70 feels great in my hands, i have a N80 and the D70 feels more solid then it does, most likely because its a bit heaiver, i have used F100s and a N90x and the D70 has a feel more like the N90's and not quite the f100, it feels very solid and the Kit DX lens it comes with is also very solid, it preforms very well and it is really light, i suspect ill use it more ten my Sigma 28-70 f.2.8 because its signifigntly lighter, its also black which IMO looke more professional i hate the shiny silver Rebel

Sure, but have you ever handled a D100 or a 10D? People that have, consider them to be much better built. They are metal, after all. Besides, the N80 is a $350 camera so I should hope the D70 feels more solid.

 

[Wallydraigle]

Here it is. Pretty cool, I am 100% sure that would void your warranty though.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: DBL

Originally posted by: Anubis

the d70 feels great in my hands, i have a N80 and the D70 feels more solid then it does, most likely because its a bit heaiver, i have used F100s and a N90x and the D70 has a feel more like the N90's and not quite the f100, it feels very solid and the Kit DX lens it comes with is also very solid, it preforms very well and it is really light, i suspect ill use it more ten my Sigma 28-70 f.2.8 because its signifigntly lighter, its also black which IMO looke more professional i hate the shiny silver Rebel

Sure, but have you ever handled a D100 or a 10D? People that have, consider them to be much better built. They are metal, after all. Besides, the N80 is a $350 camera so I should hope the D70 feels more solid.

yes actualli have held and used the 10D and 300D, yes the 10D feels better as it feels like the D100 and the F100, the Rebel on the other hand feels like a fisher price toy

 

[Koing]

My gf is looking in to buying a good camera and is considering this

Koing

 

[arcas]

I'm looking for something for astrophotography so I'm very interested in how well the D70 handles noise at long exposures. Phil only did a 30 second exposure in his review. Could one of you guys with a D70 in hand try the following when you get a chance:

1) 5 minute exposure at ISO 800
2) 10 minute exposure at ISO 800

(I'd be interested in 15- and 30-minute exposures too but that's probably asking a bit much)

Thanks in advance!

 

[GTaudiophile]

Both the Canon 300D and D70 DPreview.com forums are abuzz with comparisons and argument (ala ATi vs. nVidia). Might want to check them out.

 

[Wallydraigle]

Originally posted by: arcas
I'm looking for something for astrophotography so I'm very interested in how well the D70 handles noise at long exposures. Phil only did a 30 second exposure in his review. Could one of you guys with a D70 in hand try the following when you get a chance:

1) 5 minute exposure at ISO 800
2) 10 minute exposure at ISO 800

(I'd be interested in 15- and 30-minute exposures too but that's probably asking a bit much)

Thanks in advance!

The best thing you can do for that is take a bunch of thirty second shots and stack them on top each other. All the noise gets averaged out and you get better detail than any single exposure.

 

[Koing]

Originally posted by: lirion

Originally posted by: arcas
I'm looking for something for astrophotography so I'm very interested in how well the D70 handles noise at long exposures. Phil only did a 30 second exposure in his review. Could one of you guys with a D70 in hand try the following when you get a chance:

1) 5 minute exposure at ISO 800
2) 10 minute exposure at ISO 800

(I'd be interested in 15- and 30-minute exposures too but that's probably asking a bit much)

Thanks in advance!

The best thing you can do for that is take a bunch of thirty second shots and stack them on top each other. All the noise gets averaged out and you get better detail than any single exposure.

Nice advice

I got to play with a D70 at various shops.

It feels 'amazingly' fast not that I have had much experience with a lot of digital cameras and let alone any other DSLR. Compared to my F100 it was lighting quick and compared to the others we tried it was day and night. NOW this is what you call a high end camera (well to me it is and to a lot but probably not to you hardcore $2k+ folk!)

Koing

 

[arcas]

In principle, stacking works well. Webcams (in particular, the Philips TouCam) are very cost-effective for planetary photography because they can take rapid images which can easily be stacked. A typical processed shot might involve stacking anywhere from 200 to 1000 individual images.

But for a camera such as the D70 where the individual raw image size is somewhere around 18MB, stacking frames at 30 second intervals becomes tedious: to image a deep space object requiring an hour exposure (120 30-second images) would require 2.3GB for the intermediate images not to mention an hour worth of intermediate dark frames if you have noise reduction turned on.

There are some other problems with stacking lots of short images too. If you're imaging at a long focal length (say, 2000mm or more), any vibration in the telescope or mount will be detected; even vibration due to some SLRs' "mirror slap" can be seen at extremely long focal lengths. A typical telescope mount might dampen vibrations in anywhere from 0 to a few seconds. If you're taking 30 second shots and each shot has, say, 2 seconds worth of initial vibrations, you've got 7% distortion right away. If you're instead taking 300 second exposures, the initial 2 seconds of vibration becomes more negligible.