Nikon D70 Review

Good Points
The image quality is just stunning. The kit lens is wonderful. The camera is extremely flexable. It represents a lot of camera for the price.

Bad Points
The learning curve is rather steep for most of the advanced features. F mount lenses going back to AIS models can be used but the process is quite clumsy.
The circular control pad on the back of the camera could be bigger (that's really struggling to find a bad point).
Need special software to open NEF files.

General Comments
The last Nikon I bought was an F2 back in 1974. It is still going strong but there comes a time when one must stumble into the current century. I had been waiting for Nikon to bring a product to market that hit an affordable price point and provided equivalent performance to the film cameras I was accustomed to using.

After a week of shooting with the D70, I am just stunned by the quality of the images I am getting. This was going to augment the F2 but may very well lead to mothballing my medium format gear. Yikes!

The 18 to 70 kit lens is tack sharp and focuses very quickly. The wide variety of program modes is a little bit daunting at first but some time with the owners manual will get you into the game.

I find myself using either the P or S settings most of the time. But I turned my son loose with it set in simple "Auto" mode and everything he shot was fine. That's the strength of this camera. It can serve the needs of photographers of all experience levels pretty well.

For fun you may want to try some long exposures at night in S mode with the flash set in long exposure, rear curtain sync. The supplied software makes it very easy to open NEF files and drag them into Photoshop. Beyond that, I can't add much to what other reviewers have said about the D70.

Nikon has hung the moon on this one.