Nikon D70/D70s Review
This is my personal review of the Nikon D70 camera. It's not the kind of review you'll find on most sites where someone will borrow the camera for a few days and shoot a bunch of test charts with it before reviewing the next camera, it's a review based on REAL WORLD experience gained in over 2 years of shooting with the D70 in a professional environment (ie, to make money).
Author's note: as of late 2006, the D70/D70s is no longer being made and has been replaced by the D80, a much improved 10 megapixel camera which will be reviewed at a later date. On the lower end, Nikon have also released the D40 and D50, which in many ways improve on the D70/D70s, while costing even less money! Such is the pace of technology in the digital camera world.
Well here goes.... If Nikon didn't hit a grand slam when they released the D70 then it was definitely at least a 3-run homer. Since its introduction it's been one of Nikon's best selling cameras and the amazing features and performance given its low price make the D70/D70s one of the best values in the DSLR market. The newer D70s offers a minor upgrade from the earlier D70, mainly a larger LCD screen, remote shutter release, and a few other minor tweaks. Otherwise they are pretty much identical, though I would still recommend the D70s over the D70 if just for the larger LCD screen.
For awhile, even profossional photograpers were snapping up D70's (before the release of the D200 and D2X, Nikon's higher-end professional DSLRs), and the D70's were performing amazingly well for them. The real value in the D70 though is how much camera Nikon has managed to offfer for such a low price; it really can fit the needs of just about anyone, from total beginner to advanced amateur and even professional (it can do just about everything!)
Like all of Nikon's digital SLR offerings, the D70 will accept almost any of Nikon's vast and excellent lenses, even older manual ones, making it an excellent choice for Nikon 35mm users buying their first digital SLR. It also offers amazing battery life thanks to its powerful and lightweight lithum ion battery. In fact, the incredible battery life is one of the strongest selling points of this camera. Rarely will you be able to use up a whole battery even during a whole day of shooting, it's that good! Really, the battery life is nothing short of amazing on this camera, and it makes Nikon's newer D200 look bad by comparison, with its much more lackluster battery performance.
Image Quality. Does the D70 Deliver?
| Some D70 Examples showing off the image quality (click thumbnail slideshow) |
Runway Model with 18-70 kit lens
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Portrait w/50mm 1.8
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Church Bell
100% crop
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Outdoors with
18-70 kit lens
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Not only does the D70 deliver great detail for its 6 megapixels, it offers really exceptional color and saturation, although you will need to post-process to get the best results. All of the images above were manipulated in Photoshop, mostly to boost the levels and tweak the curves. Rarely will you find that an image straight out-of-camera looks its best. One great feature about the D70 though is that you can install custom curves, using Nikon Capture to upload the curves to your camera. This can make out-of-camera images much more snappy. Here's a good article on how to work with custom curves and also some good custom curves you can download which mimic some of Fuji's film stock. While custom curves can be a bit complicated for novices to master, they demonstrate just how flexible and customizeable a camera like the D70 is. The feature set and depth is enormous and this is a camera that can grow with you for years and teach you a tremendous amount about digital photography.
Handling and Operation
One of the best things about the D70 is its speed of operation and overall smoothness and operating simplicity. It takes pictures and processes them about as quickly as you can press the shutter, up to 3 frames per second. While the frame rate is not blazing fast, it's fast enough for most non-pro users and more importantly, the image processing and preview operations respond very quickly. This make the D70 a joy to use, never feeling like it gets in the way of taking a great picture. Even with the camera turned off, you can turn it on, compose, focus and shoot quickly enough to capture just about anything short of a very quick moving object. This was one of the first digital SLRs to reach the standard of operational speed that we've come to expect from film cameras.
Nikon seems to have discovered the right formula for building endearing camera bodies as well and the D70 is no exception. The camera body feels solid, though clearly not as substantial as Nikon's newer and more expensive D200. Though both cameras are made in Thailand, the D70 cuts a few more corners, but is still very well made especially given its price. Time has also proven that my D70 has been rugged and reliable, never failing to operate in all kinds of conditions even with a fair amount of rough handling. This is a very well made camera.
The viewfinder is one of the few areas where the D70 will constantly remind you that it is a sub-$1000 camera. It's small and it's not particularly bright, but if you're not used to a full frame SLR or another professional DSLR that costs more, you probably won't notice it too much. If you are coming from a more expensive camera, or one with a larger viewfinder (such as Konica-Minolta's excellent 7D), you probably will feel cramped by the small viewfinder.
Flash Performance
Like the D200, the D70 has a built-in Speedlight flash which offers both i-TTL (intelligent through the lens metering) and a Commander Mode which allows you to remotely fire flash units like Nikon's SB-600 or SB-800. While the built-in flash is not a substitute for either of these external flashes, it still does a very admirable job and makes for a perfect lightweight companion when a little flash is needed indoors. Using the Flash white-balance settings, color and exposure are usually very good, though it's still easy to blow out highlights when shot at close range. There's also a tendency towards red on the skin tones, as you can see in the following examples, but overall the built-in flash performs admirably when used in a pinch.
| Built-in flash delivers great results! |
Belly Dancers
w/built-in flash
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Belly Dancer
w/built-in flash
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Close range w/built-in flash
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Portrait
w/built-in flash
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Through Nikon's amazing Creative Lighting System, you can also fire remote Nikon SB-600 or SB-800 flashes using the built-in Speedlight set to Commander Mode. Commander Mode on the D70 however does not allow you to adjust the output of your remote flashes via the camera menu as with the D200. However, with an SB-800 mounted on top as a master flash, you can adjust the output of your remote flashes (exposure compenstaion), via the panel on the back of the SB-800. This allows you to adjust your flash output remotely without having to take your hands off of the camera (and attached flash). Though many people will never use this feature, I think it's one of the best sellling points of the Nikon system and is available with all of their current digital SLR cameras. The CLS allows me, for example, to have a portable lighting kit that fits into a small camera bag yet offers amazing capabilities that could only be achieved with a vastly more expensive and bulky lighting system. In my lighting kit I have 2 light stands, a 30" umbrella, 2 SB-800's and a Flash Umbrella Mount from Adorama. The umbrella diffuses the light from the flash, making it much softer, and I use the other flash to bounce off the ceiling for even wider coverage. The results are fantastic and I would urge anyone not familiar with this setup to explore it further. If you want to learn more, try Out There Images excellent i-TTL workshop, where you can learn all about the Nikon Creative Lighting System
| D70 and Nikon Creative Lighting System in action - A portable lighting studio! |
Portrait with (1) remote SB-800 on tripod, D70 built-in flash in Commander Mode
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Theatrical with (1) remote SB-800 on tripod, D70 built-in flash in Commander Mode
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SB800/SB600 mounted to umbrella with adapter. The umbrella diffuses the light output.
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Result with (1) master SB-800 on-camera and (1) remote SB-800 flash w/umbrella
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Low Light Performance
For those times when you can't use a flash, the D70 offers light sensitivity up to 1600 ISO. Some folks have criticized the fact that the D70 starts at only 200 ISO instead of 100 like many other DSLRs, but this is seldom an issue. One problem you might have though is that the ISO setting is NOT displayed in the viewfinder and makes it very easy to forget what setting you are using. I can't tell you how many times I've set the ISO really high, and then forgotten what setting I had, only to find out later that it was set too high for what I was shooting. Make sure to check it each time you start a new shoot!
A nice thing about changing ISO on the D70 is that you can set the ISO in 1/3 stop increments and generally get pretty good results right up to 1600 ISO. That's not to say that things don't get a bit noisy (especially in comparison to Canon's excellent DSLRs which dominate the high ISO shooting situation), but things aren't all that bad as long as you don't underexpose your shots (if you do, you'll notice fairly noisy shadows above ISO 800). For the most part, you'll want to use some form of noise reduction to get the best quality images starting at about 1000 ISO. Interestingly enough, Nikon's cheaper D50 and D40 have better noise performance than the D70, enough so that either of these cameras is worth a look if you really want to shoot a lot of high ISO images with a budget Nikon body. Nonetheless, I've had some excellent results shooting low light concert shots at high ISO with the D70. Though again, a program like Noise Ninja is a worthy investment if you plan to shoot at high ISO.
| High ISO - Real World Results |
1000 ISO
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1000 ISO
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1250 ISO
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1600 ISO
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Conclusion
The Nikon D70 is probably one of the best and most important cameras Nikon has ever made, period. It's also its best selling digital SLR to date. While it has some shortcomings, particularly in the high-ISO noise dept. compared to similar offerings from Canon, it delivers an unparalled amount of value for the money. This is a camera that both beginners and advanced photographers can use and it is a great camera for someone new to digital photography. It's a great learning tool as well because it can grow with you as your skills grow, never really holding you back for lack of features or capabilities. I know because this was my first digital SLR and it taught me enough about digital photography and made me enough money to embark on a successful career as a digital photographer as it has for many other people around the world. The one caveat perhaps about the D70 is that in order to get the best quality images from this camera, you do need to do a fair amount of post-processing. The D70 has a strong tendency to under-expose and almost every image will need some adjustment in Photoshop or some other image editing tool. If you don't have a lot of experience with post processing, Nikon's bundled PictureProject does wonders for the D70 photos with a touch of the Auto-Enhance button. And though PictureProject gotten some bad flack, I use it a lot and it seems to intuitively know exactly which parameters to use to make the D70's images really snap! And you can batch-process a whole folder of images, even if it isn't the fastest software in the world. Capture NX, Nikon's own professional image editing tool does an even better job, but it costs extra money since it doesn't come free with the camera. By the way, the newer D40 and D50 models deliver better out-of-camera results so will be better choices for those who aren't comfortable with post-processing software or don't want to spend the extra time on the computer.
Pros: Fast, inexpensive, highly customizeable, image quality, small size, great built-in flash, battery life, tremendous value for price
Cons: Small viewfinder, images require post processing, not a pro-level camera
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D70 Color Brochure [PDF, 2MB]
