Cameras: Nikon D70

I'm not turning this into a camera blog. Other people do that better than I do. I'm not a pro photographer. The only cameras I know are the ones I have,. I don't borrow equipment to review.  I just thought I'd share some of my own. Some of them have stories to tell. Making these blog entries will also force me to go out and do some shooting.

 My boss is always bugging me to do the photography for company events. After trying this "official photographer" stuff other ways (with film, and with a digital point and shoot), I knew that just needed to finally suck it up and get an actual DSLR.  Little did I know, this was a great time to get a used one. I really only had two criteria for a DSLR:
1: It had to be cheap
2: It had to work with the Nikkor lenses that I already own.
What you see above is my new-used Nikon D70. The lens is my AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4. I purchased the D70 body-only for less than $100 on ebay. It cost only $100 because it can be considered obsolete today. It takes still photos only, no video, and the sensor is only 6.1 mp. The D70 has a nice solid confidence-inspiring feel and great balance. I always expect a solidness in the hand from Nikons, and this camera has that. It actually feels like it means business, even though it was always a consumer or hobbyist level camera.
For more money, you can get a new camera in Nikon's "coolpix" range that has a lot more megapixels, but which also feels downright delicate, compared to a used "real" DSLR like this. The D70 is also not very big and is a pleasure to handle and carry.

Here's a size comparison with my F3

The camera's one big sin is it's tiny viewfinder to peer into. There is no split image focusing aid on the focusing screen, so I keep it in autofocus and let the camera do that work. In the viewfinder, the D70 has five focus areas (as apposed to the 30+ focus points in modern pro DSLRs). You switch focus areas with the round control pad thing on the back. In manual or aperture priority, the aperture is controlled by the wheel closest to your index finger in front of the shutter release. I'm old school and actually prefer a lens aperture ring. This doesn't feel so natural for me, even though I did once had an N6006 that required the same manipulation. 

Full creative control of light and focus isn't as easy and instinctive as it is with an actual manual camera, so, I'm fine with just using the full auto or the scene modes on the D70, even if that means I'm just using it as a glorified point-and-shoot. This camera makes simply running around snapping away at things and only thinking about composition pretty fun.

Here are two samples from my first batch of photos taken with the F70 and an AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 with the no color correction and no cropping.

 The matrix meter handled the backlighting well.

Pretty good colors.