After much waiting and conspiracy theorizing on forums DP Review has finally released their full review of the Nikon D70. For many potential buyers this is what decision making is all about, they simply will not buy anything before dpreview gives it the thumbs up.
This review is seen is important especially in this case where the camera has pronounced moire under some conditions and colour casting issues under extreme conditions, the community has been strongly devided between those with a D70 who recognises the quality of the camera and the trade offs in obtaining the image quality and those without the D70 who have been trolling and over emphasising problems. The Canon community is also hugely up in arms due to his slight favouring of the D70 over the Digital Rebel and 10D. I am glad it was not my duty to make such a decision.
Today much of that has been answered in the review and is well worth a read for any prospective buyer.
Nikon have achieved three major improvements with the D70 (compared to the competition / the D100): (1) They have improved the performance of the camera, with its instant on availability, very fast shutter release, superb continuous shooting and image processing speed and smart use of its buffer. (2) They have maintained build quality while still delivering a smaller and lighter camera, the D70 doesn’t feel much less well built than the D100 but is lighter, it certainly feels much more like $1000 worth of camera than the EOS 300D could. (3) They have improved image sharpness and detail, while we could niggle about moire the compromise between artifacts and sharpness is worth it, in many instances the D70 delivering more detail than our previous benchmark, the EOS 300D / EOS 10D CMOS sensor.
There’s not much more for me to add other than I am very pleased to see Nikon stepping up with a quality camera which doesn’t compromise on build quality, feature set or image quality and yet offers superb value for money. There’s no risk involved in the D70’s slightly higher price compared to the EOS 300D (Digital Rebel), it’s absolutely worth it.
