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Nikon - D70 Digital SLR Camera (Body Only) - NEW!

Nikon - D70 Digital SLR Camera (Body Only) - NEW!

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Shutter Lag?? Not Hardly!
Review: Lets get to the main point of buying a DSLR - I wanted fast & sharp results with versatility included. This is what I wanted and this is what I got! The price couldn't get much cheaper or it'd be an absolute steal (not that it already isn't). I feel like a real professional just HOLDING the D70. Truth is, I wouldn't give up this baby for the world. Digital SLR's are so much better than some cheap point and shoot restraintive camera. Break free and buy a D70! Look at the flawless reviews, try it out, and see for yourself. YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Shutter Lag?? Not Hardly!
Review: Lets get to the main point of buying a DSLR - I wanted fast & sharp results with versatility included. This is what I wanted and this is what I got! The price couldn't get much cheaper or it'd be an absolute steal (not that it already isn't). I feel like a real professional just HOLDING the D70. Truth is, I wouldn't give up this baby for the world. Digital SLR's are so much better than some cheap point and shoot restraintive camera. Break free and buy a D70! Look at the flawless reviews, try it out, and see for yourself. YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Canon biting its nails...(for now)
Review: Like Ken Rockwell said, this is the finest digital camera under $3000. I am an advanced user and have used this machine to do all kinds of photography..action - using telephoto lenses, portraiture - in my makeshift studio using studio strobes, microphotography (not just macro) at 9X magnification by mounting on an old Olympus bellows and using Olympus macro lenses(dont ask me how), and even everyday street shooting with a zoom lens. This camera excels in everything it does. Image quality when shooting RAW at ISO 200 and subject properly illuminated by multuple strobes, is simply unmatched.

However nothing is perfect, and I am less than 100% satsified with the white balance. When WB is set on 'strobe', flash exposures come out a tad warm. Thats not a problem at all as it can be corrected in a flash in photoshop. Better still, is to do a "measure" by shooting a gray/white card in the same light that will illuminate the subject, and let the camera load a 'custom' white balance.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant.
Review: Love the camera. Perfect for move from film slr to digital slr. I love this camera. Will keep it for life.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Good camera, horrible service and dust inside lens
Review: Nikon service is deplorable. D70 dust fibers in lens seems to be Nikon's Dirty Little Secret. 178$ in warranty cleaning and I can see the swab streaks on outside yet they did not remove dust from interior of the lens. This is not a joke. I have receipts, letters and store representatives as witnesses of defect. P.S. I guess if they don't fix it Nikon pretends they forgot your correct address as they did this to me and to others, news groups. This is days after purchase not a week. They have had the equipment for over two months yet are incapable of performing the correct repair. Are they total imbeciles? Are they illiterate? Do they want to remedy a factory defect? Who knows, all I know is that my D70 kit is not growing in value at the Nikon factory and that it's happening to other people too. Maybe they will fix it in time for the next model release. A company's warranty repair record should concern anyone making a large purchase. It does not matter how many bells and whistles a product has when it functions, if something goes wrong and your warranty is harmful instead helpful, you've bet on the wrong horse.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ape finds mysterious monolith and . . .
Review: No kidding, I'm almost a raw amateur. I put down photography 20 years ago and finally decided to buy another camera - I knew it'd be digital, hardly anyone talks about film these days - so I started looking around the very day the D70 came out. Knew nothing about it, only that I couldn't find one at five different stores I stopped at in the Boston area. One look at the specs and the price, though, and I knew a fixed lense digicam was a serious waste of money for a compromise.
Bought the camera with the 18-70mm lense as well as a 70-300mm zoom I needed for flexibility. Looked at the manual. White balance? What's that?
Took the camera out to a nearby lake. What pictures! Razor sharp. First vari-setting I tried I could see the needles in the tops of evergreens fifty feet away on the LCD screen. Bright display, fast starting, good viewfinder. Been learning its foibles ever since.
Comments: In bright sunlight there's a necessity to back off the ISO, white balance or exposure; but on the other end of the scale, I've taken images at 8:30 p.m., no flash, and liked the mood the camera captured.
Yes, incredibly flexible. I like to shoot close-ups of swamp plants 20 feet away. The 18-70mm seems to shoot a sharper picture, and the zoom leaves blur around the edges when I push its limits, but I'm really pleased with how handy this camera is, quick, adaptable, easy to use, high visibility.
Problems: No handgrip available, I have to make one. Also (maybe it's my big hands) the on-camera adjustment for shutter and aperture, done while focusing through the lense, seem a little difficult to adjust to. No biggies, considering everything else.
Seriously, I'm still marveling at my good luck! What a piece of technology!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The affordable digital SLR is here!
Review: Simply put, the Nikon D70 is the finest camera I have ever used. As an amateur photographer I have owned a variety of Nikon SLRs during the age of film photography. That is until the digital bug hit me with the introduction of the Olympus C2020 (a superb camera in its own right). I have anxiously awaited the day when I could return to the SLR and do it digitally. The D70 has made my day! This camera is incredibly easy to use and intuitive right out of the box. You can easily operate exposure controls, flash, and etc. without going through menus. All the settings can be seen in the viewfinder and the control dials are in the right places so you don't have to take your eye off the subject. It felt like coming home again to use an SLR, shoot through a viewfinder, and quickly and easily adjust exposures. Since there is no shutter-lag with this camera, and image writing to the card is fast, you don't have to anticipate your shots. Image quality is phenomenal and the 6 megapixel count assures you of excellent "darkroom" control. There are so many image capture options available in its menu that it pays to test the camera for settings that satisfy your needs (e.g. regulating sharpness, contrast, and tonal distributions). But even the default automatic settings provide photographs that can be beautifully printed right out-of-the-box. The 18-70mm DX lense that comes with the kit (equivalent to 27-105mm for 35mm film) is a great buy and delivers excellent image quality. I only wish its filter size (67mm) matched any of the filters that I had acquired for my old lenses. For the serious amateur who wants the level of control and image quality that only an SLR can provide, the Nikon D70 is definitely it. The affordable digital SLR has arrived! Sorry, Kodak, the era of film photography has truly come to an end.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A mind of its own...
Review: Sometimes it won't let me take a picture. I have no idea why it won't but sometimes it just determines I'm not smart enough to warrant a shot or something.

Whoever the little gremlin is inside my camera I really wish he would inform me what I'm doing/not doing at that moment. The camera usually clicks away quickest when I'm demonstrating how fast it can shoot. The subject of course is unimportant at that point. Later, when my "model" (whoo hoo) is ready to go the little gremlin says no way. Doh! I've owned it since the first day it was available in the U.S. of A.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Just took it to Disney!
Review: Sorry to inform all of the final death of film photograhy. Finally, a full featured digital SLR that makes no compromises is available for the consumer market. The camera is amazingly fast, works in the dark, has a great integrated flash, is easy to use, has a battery that lasts for days, and is fully compatible with all nikon AF lenses. Not only that, it takes pictures that will shame the 150 year old chemical film process into oblivion. I own a nikon 5700 and I am happy to report that this camera simply blows it, or anything else in the market at any price, away. Thank you Nikon, this is the digital camera all photo buffs have been waiting for!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Digital SLR
Review: This camera is awesome! I have a Nikon N80 35mm film camera and the D70 is basically a digital version of the N80. They look and perform in very similar manners. The D70 is slightly taller and heavier than the N80, though. I do want to warn people that digital photography with a D-SLR is different than film photography with a 35mm SLR. It takes practice and a little time to get used to it. But once you do you'll love it!

The D70 has pretty much everything a digital SLR needs. It takes exceptionally sharp pictures with the 6.1 MP sensor. The rechargeable battery lasts forever. So far I've taken about 200 pictures (some with flash, some without), reviewed the pics on the LCD and experimented with various menu functions and the battery meter hasn't gone down any yet.

The menu on the D70 is expansive. It has all kinds of customizations to make the camera fit your personal preferences (Like which control knob changes aperture or shutter speed, bracketing order, self timer length, etc). The camera also includes many white balance settings and adjustments like vivid, saturation, contrast, etc.

The camera can take pictures in 5 different options: NEF(RAW), JPEG fine, JPEG Normal, JEPG Basic and NEF+JPEG Basic. And the pictures can be taken in 3 sizes: L (3,008x 2000), M (2,240x 1,488) and S (1,504x 1,000).

The D70 has a very fast write time to the memory card. Plus it has a memory buffer which lets you continue taking pictures even while the camera is writing to the card. Because of this I would recommend saving some money by buying a basic type memory card. I don't think you really need a "high speed" card. When I was testing out my camera, with a basic card, I was able to take 7-8 JPEG Fine pictures in about 3-4 seconds before the camera's buffer filled up (as soon as a picture is written to the card the buffer frees up space and so you can continue to take pictures but the picture taking rate slows down, maybe 1/sec. instead of 3/sec.)

The viewfinder is very clear and has a bar at the bottom that tells you shutter speed, aperture, metering numbers, etc. You can elect to add horizontal and vertical lines to the viewfinder as one of your custom settings. I would recommend doing this since it helps you keep things leveled up.

Auto focus is fast and pretty accurate most of the time. Of course you need AF lenses to utilize this feature. There is really no "shutter lag." As soon as you push the shutter button the camera takes the picture. Also, there is no start up time when you turn the camera on.

There are a few things I wish the D70 had. First, I wish it had a bigger viewfinder (like the one in the N80). Second, I wish it had "live view" on the LCD monitor like point and shoot cameras. As far as I know no D-SLRs have "live view." Since SLRs have a through the lens viewfinder the camera's mirror (which flips up when the picture is taken) blocks the digital sensor. Third, I wish it had a sensitivity speed of ISO 100. And fourth, I wish it had a mirror lockup mode for taking slower shutter speed pictures (The mirror can be locked up for cleaning, why not for picture taking!).

In conclusion, this is a great camera and you will not be disappointed. I think it is a steal for $1,000 since it has many professional D-SLR features. I would definitely buy it again and I very highly recommend it. Best of luck in your digital photography endeavor!



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