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Another Nikon D70 review!
by Paul Dunn

There are enough technical reviews of the D70 that I will not include any of that sort of information. What I want to try to do here is give you an idea what I went through in moving from my Nikon N90s to a D70. What I had to do in order to get the pictures I wanted out of the camera basically as a replacement for my N90s with Kodak Portra 160vc.

Background: I started taking pictures when I was about 11. My mom gave me the choice between karate lessons or a Canon AE-1 setup that someone at her office was selling. I took the AE-1.

I used the AE-1 for years until, about 6 years ago, the meter gave out and then the mirror return broke. When I got the repair estimate, I decided that it was time for a new camera. My wife and I went to visit family in Germany and on one trip, when the exchange rate was really good, began to look at cameras. I liked the Nikon F65 whilst she like the Minolta 505 (in the US it's the XTsi). I'll give you 3 guesses who won.

Sigh, I really began to hate that Minolta. It's not to say that the pictures were bad, I always ran it in manual mode and pics came out fine. The auto-focus was awful and it would hunt forever before finally deciding that focus was good enough. I don't know how many pictures I lost because the camera would not focus.

Enter Ebay: I started getting into photography again and started taking a lot of landscapes. I picked up a Mamiya 645 1000s from ebay for $200. I added an 80mm and a 210mm along with a pentax spotmeter. Using a spotmeter and the zone system along with my manual-everything camera helped sharpen my skills; my B&W photos were getting better (sample below). Fuji Velvia 50 in 6x4.5 (or larger) is something to behold. Looking at a slide that large is astounding. But alas, I sold the Mamiya and related items.

Enter Ebay again: I picked up a Nikon N90s body on ebay for $80, added a 28-70 zoom for $60 and I was hooked. Even with the consumer lens, AF was much faster than the Minolta. Once I added the 35-70 f2.8, AF speed jumped up again. There is a small difference in speed between my N90s and the D70 (the D70 being faster) but the difference is small enough to not be an issue.

I just picked up a Nikon D70 a few Saturdays ago. first impressions are pretty good. I will not attempt to give you all the technical details, there are others out there who are much more nit-picky than I and have much more experience and savvy in figuring these things out.

First impressions: The D70 is a very light camera. I have the N90s with vertical grip and a Minolta Dynax 505si (XTSI). The N90s is a comparatively heavy camera. The Minolta is quite light. The D70 compares to the Minolta in heft. I like the weight of the N90s and the size with the vertical grip but went with the D70 over the Digital Rebel mainly because of the way it fits my hand and the fact that even though both cameras are plastic, the D70 feels less 'plasticky' to me than the Digital Rebel. The only thing in this area I do not like is the way the CF door winds up under my thumb. I can feel it move and it gives me a sense that my thumb doesn't belong there.

I did not buy the kit, although I've read good reviews of the AF-S kit lens. With my N90s I've got a 35-70 f2.8 which is 52-105 on the D70. So without the kit lens, I've lost some wide-angle, but for the range lost I could not justify the extra $300. When I got the camera home, BAH! couldn't play with it, had to charge the battery. The battery took about 2 hours to charge, during which time the camera store clerk suggested I read the owners manual. Little did he know that punk & punkette (punk is my 2 year old son, and punkette my 7 month old daughter) would have other plans for my time.

I grabbed the lens off of the N90s and put it on the D70.. whoa! that heavy lens (~1/2 pound) on the super light D70 felt very unbalanced. The weight hangs out in front greatly disturbing how the camera feels in hand. As long as your grip is such that your left hand supports the base of the camera AND the lens (which mine does anyway, for the zoom) it's not bad and in the couple days so far, I've gotten used to it. One-handed shots are still a challenge though. It's proving difficult to hold the camera steady one-handed with this lens, especially vertical shots. I'm sure that this will improve with time, as I get used to it, besides, I'm spoiled with the N90s and vertical grip.

Ok, on to the pictures. I only had a 32meg compact flash card. This card is a Kodak that I picked up for $8 brand new. NOTE: even though it says Kodak on it, it is made by Lexar, and for $8 it's hard to beat.

I grabbed one of my favorite subjects and started taking pictures in idiot mode (AUTO). On the LCD screen the images were mpressive and I love having the instant feedback. After taking a few pics and just deleting them, I started keeping them and looking at the histograms. All of them were really squashed down the left. hmmm.. I decided to just keep taking pics and worry about them later. Since my CF card was so small, I had to move files off regularly. I am lucky in that my loving wife bought me an Archos Gmini120 for Christmas. While being a nice 20gig MP3 player, it has the very nice and soon-to-be-oft-used feature of a compact flash slot. When full, the compact flash card gets pulled from the camera, put in the Gmini which then copies the files to the internal hard drive. Delete the pics and you're back to shooting. Awesome!

Later that evening, I loaded the pictures onto my laptop from the Gmini. "Looking good", I thought, until I opened one in Photoshop. Below you can see one of the pics taken from the D70. Next to it is the histogram. The picture was taken at 70mm, f2.8 and 1/60^th. This is as-is from the camera excepting that it was set to 72dpi and shrunk in size. On the right is the picture after a PS auto-levels.

Quite a difference. I then switched the camera to aperture priority and took some more photos. You can see from the histogram that the photo is a little better exposed and things have moved more towards the right. But, once again, Photoshop shows what's missing after an auto-levels.

All of the images so far are in the same color space (Ia or sRGB). I tried using a little compensation on the camera (+0.3 and +0.7) and using fill-flash (both at +-0 and -0.7), which of course helped a great deal, but in Auto mode if the flash popped up, I was guaranteed to have blown highlights unless I used -0.7 flash compensation and even then sometimes the image still needed help.

UPDATE: I picked up a Magic Lantern Guide for the D70 and therein it is written that in Auto mode, flash compensation does not have much effect. Actually that in Auto, P,S and A modes when 3-D matrix metering is used, the camera will override flash compensation settings and do what it thinks is best. If you set the camera to center weighted or spot metering, flash compensation works as expected.

The following picture was done +0.3 exposure compensation and -0.7 flash. Photoshop "auto-levels" at bottom.

Barely noticeable change from the levels. Please keep in mind that no other corrections have been made, the images have not been sharpened nor have they had color- or contrast corrections done.

At this point I am still very happy with the results from the D70. I have yet to setup my little studio and take some "serious" photos as I didn't have time this weekend. I think this is where I can start to make the D70 shine. Manual mode. Gotta love it.

<soap box on>
I'm sure you've read it before, but the camera equipment you use doesn't make all that much difference. I truly believe, along with countless others, that as long as you are comfortable using it and happy with it, you'll be able to take great pictures. As an example, I got a piece of black fabric at Jo-Ann fabrics for about $5 (instead of the $100's for muslin photo backgrounds), I setup an old sunpak flash on a tripod, I setup a JTL strobe with white umbrella (which I bought used from the local photo store for $25). I grabbed some white ticking or stuffing or whatever the stuff is from my wife's sewing box. A trip to the garage got the kids' sled and I setup a small "studio" on my bed (seen at right). You're probably now wondering what the heck I'm yapping about at this point, but there is a point to this.

I took this picture at right with the above setup and a Kodak 1.2MP point & shoot camera bought on ebay for $30. Maybe it's not a 'professional studio' portrait, but it's not too bad for a home photo taken by a dad (mommy wasn't there to help and after this pic, Caitlin decided she'd had enough playing 'super model'). In the 'studio' pic you can see the Minolta XTsi sitting on the bed along with my flash meter.
<soap box off>

I took some more photos last night and discovered 2 very important things. I was so used to using film that these things never entered into my mind. Film has great exposure latitude; meaning that you can over- or underexpose and still get a very useable image. You also don't really need to worry about white balance unless you happen to be do something like use tungsten film under fluorescent lights. On the D70 white balance and exposure are very important. I found that somewhere between +0.3 and +1EV in exposure compensation made a huge difference. Also white balance is very important. First take a picture at EV0, then +0.3, +0.7 and +1. See which version you like the best, then, set WB to Auto, take a picture, now set WB to indoors, shade, fluorescent and flash and take the exact same photo. Big difference. in how the pictures look. I am going to now take some pictures on the CF card and without editing, have them printed at the local drug store. 4x6 prints are $0.20.

OK, I got back my prints from the drug store. They screwed up the price and only charged me $0.01 per print! But that was still too expensive as the prints look like crap. If this was film, I'd say that they were over-exposed by at least 1 1/2 stops. On screen they look great though. So I took the exact same files to the local photo lab. I had them print the images with the instructions to not do any corrections whatsoever. This time the prints came back great! I was very happy with the results. The cost per print is, of course, higher but I could not tell the difference between these prints and some that I've done with Kodak Portra 160vc. This is the kicker. I took the prints home and showed the boss. I started off showing her the drug store prints. She was not impressed and did not hesitate to let me know this especially in light of the cost of the camera. I then showed her the prints from the photo lab. "WOW, those are great!" OK, the camera has now gotten the seal of approval.

In retrospect, here's what I think is happening: I have my camera set to color mode II (adobe RGB) and not to either I or III (sRGB). It is likely that the equipment at the local drug store is setup to handle the sRGB colorspace and not the adobe RGB. The local photo lab uses Photoshop and some other software when printing digital files so I imagine that they handle the adobe RGB colorspace without a problem. I am going to change one of the files to sRGB, edit and correct the colors and levels and have it printed at the drug store again to verify this.

Also another "gotcha" I found: I was taking pictures of my daughter last night. I had the camera in manual mode. I pushed the button for the pop-up flash, set the aperture and shutter speed, and started taking pictures. I wanted to change the images a little and set the shutter speed a little faster. The image on the LCD looked the same. So I changed the aperture and took another picture. The image on the LCD looked the same. Another change, another picture; same results. This was around 6:30 in the evening and I was taking pictures of my daughter at 1/500th and f22 and they looked fine! I went through the Magic Lantern guide again and re-read the section on flash. "ah (insert expletive here)" was my reaction when I read the statement again that in TTL flash mode the camera will automatically adjust the flash according to your settings to ensure that you get a "good" exposure (the definition of TTL, I guess). I took the flash out of TTL and started to get the results I expected. According to the book, if you put the camera in M or spot-meter in P,S or A then you get standard TTL instead of i-TTL. Well, that may be true, but the camera still is sort of overriding you when you change the settings, because it will increase or decrease flash power to compensate for your changes. This is, so far, the only thing about the camera I don't care for. It's really a pain, as far as I'm concerned, to have to go into the menu and change the flash to manual mode to get that control. Basically I set some compensation on the camera, but it then overrides me and adjusts flash output. I know this is small and really not an issue, but I sure like it better with my N90s and SB-25; flip a switch on the flash and I have complete control. I could have taken the pictures without the flash, but I would have had a very slow shutter speed, and for a flopping-around 7 month-old, that just doesn't work. Other than nit-picking issues like this, I really love the D70 so far.

OK, I finally setup my home "studio". This consists of black fabric hung over the windows at my bed, a JTL studio strobe and a sunpak 522 flash. I set the camera to Manual mode, put the flash in manual and set it to 1/16 power. I have a flash meter but just decided to start shooting and adjust on the fly. This is where I finally got the results I wanted, straight out of the camera. The only real issue that I came across is that white balance in Auto mode can only take things so far. I got far better results setting the WB to flash and then taking pictures. The problem with this is that when the sun peaked out from the clouds and came in the room, I shut the flashes off and took pictures in available light. I set the WB to both sunshine and cloudy which gave the images a nice rich/warm color, but when the sun disappeared behind clouds again, I forgot to switch back to flash WB. This made for images where there was a bit of a color shift, still quite usable but they could still use some color correction.

Note: since I only have a 32meg card at this point, these images are in Large jpeg, normal. 32meg fills up mighty fast with anything else. I think I can only get 5 or 6 NEF files and when taking pictures of a fast-moving object (like a 7month old) that's not enough. One might wonder why I only have a 32meg card; I'm too cheap to pay photo store prices for them. I have ordered 2x256 Sandisk Ultra II cards from buy.com. As of 1/26/05 they are only $24.99 per, and free shipping!

All images are at ISO 200, mode II (adobe RGB), low sharpening, + color saturation, tone comp normal, hue 0.

1/200^th @ f8 WB:flash	1/20^th @ f2.8 WB:cloudy (available light)
1/500^th @ f13 WB: cloudy	1/500^th @ f9 WB: flash

When I setup like this, I ask my daughter if she wants to play 'super model'. We make a game out of it even though she's only 7 months old. "work it, work it... OK, you're a kitten (sample at right) lost in the forest!" I think that both of my kids will grow up with memories of their dad with a camera sticking out of his face.

Caitlin, Connor and I had another portrait studio session yesterday. I think that between my wife and me, we took just over 100 pictures. If I figure this with the Kodak Portra 160 I was using... 36 exposures @ $5 per roll (B&H grey) and then about $14 developing and printing at the local photo lab, this short little session would have cost me around $60. As it turned out, it cost me a few pennies for the electricity to run the flashes and a little electricity to fire-up the computer to download the images.

Studio Session 2 update: the pictures turned out great and Caitlin was really in a great mood for them until her big brother accidentally hit her whilst posing. This ended the super model shoot, but Connor and I had great fun with some peak-a-boo pictures instead. (Samples from this session below)

This leads me to the conclusion. I moved to digital because of the inordinate amount of money I was spending on film and processing. I was shooting Kodak Portra 160VC and was bulk ordering it along with B&W. I was shooting in the neighborhood of 6 or 7 rolls every 3 to 4 weeks. My wife was having to purchase a new photo album every few weeks because I was handing her 2-300 shots in that amount of time (not all of the kids though, I do have quite a few landscapes). Although the Nikon D70 is a pricey piece of equipment for an amateur, it allows me to do the processing myself and print a few at home on my ink-jet. If I have pictures that I want to frame, or send out to family, I can take only those to the photo lab and get them printed for far less than the cost of printing at home and I know what I'm getting before I drop them off.

I have taken just over 1000 pictures so far with the camera, I've had it connected to the computer to play with Nikon Capture and I've used the built-in flash extensively. I have had to charge the battery twice. Once when I first brought the camera home and then this past weekend. On the first charge I think I got close to 700 images.

In case you are wondering about landscapes and such, I took the camera with me as we went for a family walk this past Saturday when we had our February thaw. Here is a birch tree on my property along with Connor discovering some puddles.

At this point I have gotten the level of comfort with the D70 that comes close to that which I have with my N90s. I know where the majority of the settings are in the menus, I know how to set the camera most of the time to get the images I want without a delay digging through the menus. To get to this point took me probably about a month of playing around and reading the Magic Lantern Guide. I don't know everything there is to know about this camera; but all-in-all I am happy with the results. Sure there are things that I don't like about it (having to dig in menus to change flash mode, lack of a vertical grip) But these are comparatively minor. After showing friends the pictures I've taken of my kids, a few of them want me to take pictures of their children. What more can be said, except:

Anybody want to buy a nice Nikon N90s setup along with quite a few rolls of film?

Sample images showing flash and exposure compensation

exp+0.7 flash+0.7 exposure comp: +0.7 Flash comp:+0.7

exp+0.7 flash+0.3 exposure comp: +0.7 Flash comp:+0.3

exp+0.7 flash-0.3 exposure comp: +0.7 Flash comp:-0.3

exp+0.7 flash 0 exposure comp: +0.7 Flash comp: 0

Paul is a computer programmer in Michigan, contact him at dunnsept@verizon.net.

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