D70s

I have been looking around, and have been thinking about buying a D70s body. Does anyone have

any thoughts about this camera?

For almost two years I've been using two D70s bodies with a Nikon 24-85mm f/2.8-4

D macro, Nikon AF-S 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 ED and Tokina ATX-Pro 12-24mm f/4. I shoot

events, concerts, print ads, portraits, all kinds of stuff, and print 13x19 often. I'm very

happy with the camera, but I find when I shoot sports, the 3 frames per second is just

a bit slow at times, and I have run into grain problems once in a awhile at higher ISO,

so I'm actually looking forward to replacing the D70s bodies with the D300.

We need to know a few things to advise you first:

What do you shoot? or want to shoot?

Do you already own lens? Are the AF or AI or AI-s?

What's your budget?

I would suggest springing for a D80, they are very well priced right now, and a new one will come with a one year warranty so if anything breaks or goes wrong, you're covered. Usually, it's much cheaper to get a camera with a warranty then to have to shell out the money later for a camera that just failed and isn't covered.

I have this camera since 2 years and it does a pretty good job. You won't make better pictures with D60 or D80 and even with the D300 except for high ISO (the D300 has much more better noise control at high ISO)

If you buy a used D70s, take a few shots to see and also check the shutter count (go to http://drchung.new21.net/previewextractor/)

The D70 is a nice camera, but newer cameras have improved in many ways. Depending on what you do, some later model might be more suitable.

I disagree with the previous poster about making better pictures; in a purely aesthetical sense the statement might be true, but in a technical sense a camera such as the D300 offers far better image quality and many features that aid in nailing the shot.

I had a D70s and it took some lovely photos.It produced nicely resolved images.The colour saturation in jpegs sometimes appeared conservative.In reality they mirrored the original colour of the scene.

It seems many of us have gotten used to achieving more highly saturated colours nowadays with modern cameras.(if needed).

Of course if you shoot raw then that doesnt come into the equation.

The one drawback in my mind was the amount of noise in the images over iso 400.I know noise can be reduced but then those nicely resolved images I mentioned earlier, would not be so good.

If you use the D70s in good light though and are able to use iso`s 2 to 400 then noise just is not a problem and you can achieve wonderful results from a D70s.

Its has a solid and well made feel to its body and is bigger than a Canon rebel or the Nikon D40.

Its a fine camera for $300. Not great for action. Color balance is odd sometimes.

Small VF. If you have $1800 buy a D300, it is better in all respects, but is it 5 times

better? Really need more details about what you will use it for to answer that

question....

Hi,

I have been using two D70's since they were introduced. I haven't been motivated to plunk down a lot of bucks for a new body yet. Sure a D3 would be nice -- but @ $5,000. totally unjustafiable for most of us.

I do nature, portraits, some P.R. and product stuff -- I've been really satisfied with the D70 -- made many beautiful 13x19 & larger.

It isn't the best for action/sports but if you understand its capabilities and limitations you can make it work for you.

For around $300, heck go ahead and get one. See how it works for you -- then you'll have a better idea about what extra cabability you REALLY need before you shell out $1,000 to $2,000. You

l'll still have the D70 for a backup.

If it turns out that it performs well for you, then spend money on some good glass -- or just fill your tank up with GAS

Thanks all for your input. I am in a price range of cheap but good. I don�t have any

need for any faster than 3fps. I now have a D100, so no change in lens�s that i already

have would be needed, although another lens would be nice, but with the cost of some

lens�s you could but a new camera. What Peter had said is most of what i do now, and

think i would be satisfied with a D70s. There is one thing that concerns me, and that is

the shutter count, which has been mentioned here a couple times. If the count is put

back to zero is there a memory of the real count on the camera? Thanks for all your

help...John

John, the shutter count can't be reset by the user. Only Nikon service can do that and it's only done when the shutter unit is replaced so I wouldn't worry about it.

If you want to get the best image quality out of the D70s you must shoot raw because the jpeg rendition is not good. With a reasonably fast cf card (sandisk ultra II or faster) shooting raw can be done without problems on the D70s, unlike the D100 which is quite slow if I remember correctly.

Good luck,

Peter

Peter, I do use a sandisk ultra II 2gb card now, and the camera works better than it

did before, but have no reference as to what slow is. As far as the shutter count is concerned i am glad to hear that it can't be reset by the user. Jack had sent me a

link to check the count. I did download it but not much luck on how to use it, but did

get it to load the images, but as far as seeing the count i haven't figured out how

that that works. I have had my D100 for a few years , but have never found a

combination of custom settings that i like, so i have ended up putting all to normal,

which has made my output consistency very hard to achieve, but that is another

topic.

Thanks for all the help.....John

John, I don't think the D100 registers the shutter count in the file so that's why you can't find it.

The difference in speed is that the D70S writes images to the card 2 to 3 times faster than the D100. So if you shoot for exampel 4 raw images in a row the camera is ready for the 5th one much sooner. That makes is practical to shoot raw files even if you need to fire a burst now and then. The D70S writes compressed raw files so they are mostly between 5 to 6 MB each and I get around 700 raw images on a 4GB card. 700 images is how many I can shoot before I need to replace the battery so it works pretty good.

Search the forum here and you'll find lots more on the D70 and the D100 and their differences.

Peter