Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Today I bought a new camera. I got a Nikon D70S, an “entry-level” digital SLR. Predictably, I couldn’t wait to try it out. Here are some photos from my first walkabout with the camera.

The Nikon D70S is a single lens reflex (SLR) camera. It’s the first SLR I’ve ever owned, film or digital.

SLR strikes me as an odd name because it really refers to cameras that can have interchangeable, i.e. multiple lenses, not a single lens like “point-and-shoot” cameras.

Although it has extensive manual controls, I’ll use it with auto-focus, auto-exposure and auto-everything else, particularly at the beginning.

The Nikon D70s shoots “only” 6 megapixels. But I was not upgrading from a point-and-shoot digicam to get more megapixels. I’ve read enough (and seen enough with my own eyes) to know that beyond a certain level MP is not the end all and be all for getting quality images. Indeed, I think some of the best photos I’ve ever taken were shot with my first digicam, a Nikon 990 with a “mere” 3 MP. Currently I have a 5 MP camera (a tiny Pentax Optio 5si, which I like very much). There are now many 7 MP and above cameras on the consumer market; all cost less than I paid today for a 6 MP Nikon. The Nikon D70S’ main and slightly less expensive competitor is the 8 MP Canon Digital Rebel.

There is of course nothing wrong with having more megapixels. It’s useful for making really big prints and for drastic cropping. But the main driver in my decision to upgrade my camera is that I am sick and tired of missing shots because of waiting for my camera. So many times I’ve seen a shot I wanted to get but found the moment gone when my camera finally was ready to perform. My Pentax, like most point-and-shoot digicams (and perhaps worse than others) takes too long to boot up and record a shot to memory. A few seconds can be too long when you are trying to capture an image; I want a camera that shoots boom-boom-boom, a camera that will instantly power up and then shoot in quick bursts if needed.

Digital SLRs can do that. The Nikon is ready to perform two-tenths of a second after you hit its power button–in other words, instantaneously. It can shoot three frames per second. It can buffer shots before they are written to the CF card, allowing it to sustain that 3 fps pace for, at some settings, 144 shots! In other words, it solves my camera delay problem

The image quality should be better, too—at least once I learn more about how to use all its controls and features. While it has auto-everything settings, I need to learn how to operate things manually. Right now, I don’t know an f-stop from an aperture priority from a ISO setting. But I’ll learn.

Besides the need for speed, I rationalized my purchase with the following ideas:

My father’s 80th birthday is coming up soon. We will have a big party, gathering a lot of friends and relatives. I want to get good photos at this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Helen will be 5 soon. We’ll have a birthday party for her. I want to document that. Plus, every day she does something lovely and cute. As they say, it goes by so fast. I want a better camera to record her growing up. (For example, the other night we went to the somewhat bizarre show at an establishment in the mall called Midevel Times. There number is 1-800-We-Joust. Two of Helen’s current biggest enthusiasms are horses (especially the “My Little Pony” line) and the Disney princess marketing blitz. Thus, I thought she’d get a kick out of a show with horses and a princesses. Indeed, she did. But my little digicam was simply pathetic as a tool for capturing any of it. It could do nothing with the fast-moving horses or the low light.)

I’ve become something of a photography enthusiast. In the last 7 months or so I’ve taken literally thousands of shots. I’ve sent pictures around by email, uploaded them to web sites, retouched and edited some of them, organized my collection on a big hard drive and choreographed several slide shows. Since I’m spending so much time on this hobby it makes sense to upgrade my equipment.

I’ll be spending a lot more time in China, and there’s so much to photograph there. I could chronicle part of their historic transition.

To choose a camera, I bought several magazines and spent at least 10 hours reading online. I determined that a digital SLR is the type of camera I want, and I made a list of the models in the expensive but conscionable entry-level SLR price range. Currently the main cameras contending in this space are:

There’s not an over-abundance of comparative information on all these models, partly because the product cycles move so quickly. The Nikon D70s (which I bought) and D50 were only announced in April of this year and hit the stores in May—so they’ve been on the shelves only a few weeks.

The best sources I found include:

Digital Photography Review (great info & reviews, though the detailed reviews tend to lag behind what’s on the market slightly)

There is something of a brand jihad between certain enthusiastic Nikon and Canon users. Both Canon and Nikon appear to have great cameras, and it’s great there’s competition to improve the products and drive down prices. My decision to go with the Nikon D70s was influenced by several factors.

There was no slam dunk answer from the reviews., and I didn’t have any existing investment in lenses that fit either the Canon or Nikon bodies. So I went to a Ritz Camera to try them out. Ritz’s corporate headquarters happen to be a short drive from the University of Maryland, and they have a showroom store there where I bought my Pentax pocket camera. I was happy with that experience, and I wanted to talk with someone who would actually know something about what they are selling (unlike the teenagers you usually get at BestBuy and other big retail stores). Plus I knew at Ritz I could try side-by-side comparisons. I even took my memory cards so that I could shoot and compare.

It was hard to discern any difference in image quality using the crappy monitors for ordering prints available in the store. The D50, D70s and Rebel XT were all stunningly fast. T

But the D70s just felt better in my hand (the Canon grip is smaller). Also, I enjoyed my two previous Nikon CoolPix digicams. I was tempted to go for the Nikon D50, having read it takes the best pictures out of the box. It also had a comfortable grip but was lighter than the D70s which made it feel flimsier. The guy in the store who seemed to know the most recommended the D70S. He said it has a better lens in the “kit.”

So in a close call I went with the D70S, thinking I can test drive it and exchange it if I don’t like it (Ritz actually has a 10-day return policy, meaning if I end up not liking the camera I can return it for a refund, though realistically I’d just exchange it and try something else).

I took it home, charged the battery a bit (which apparently will run the camera long enough to take over 2,000 shots–wow!) and started experimenting. My first photo was of course of my daughter Helen. She woke from a nap, told me a little about a birthday party for a classmate she’d been to today (it was a My Little Ponies theme, so she unpacked her party favors and spread them out on the floor to show me). We hung out outside in the front yard a few minutes, then she went in for dinner and I walked around the neighborhood shooting flowers. When I drove home I saw the light falling in an interesting way on stacks of wood at a nearby nursery. I took some shots there, too.

There’s a lot I have to learn about the camera. Right now, I don’t even know how to suppress the automatic flash. But while my first images aren’t ready for National Geographic, based on my experience so far I am happy with the camera. I’ll have to learn how to coax the best pictures out of it, but absolutely I have solved my problems with slow camera start-ups and shot-to-shot delays. I’m looking forward to using this camera and learning more about it and photography generally.