Went into London Drugs yesterday to take a bit of a closer look at the Nikon D70 after Gareth suggested it might be something to consider in my comments.
Some other random dude was there just coming over to look at the same camera. We talked a bit and I suggested he check out the various review sites to get an idea. I also told him what I knew about the camera (which isn’t much). Super fast motor drive, takes all Nikon Lenses… not much more than that.
He was comparing it to the Digital Rebel and $salesdroid was saying how the D70 was much easier to use. I disagreed, but did allow that my familiarity with the Canon A70 probably made the Digital Rebel make more sense to me. We both agreed that both cameras were huge compared to the 35mm SLR that he had with him.
The camera had a flash cardr in it and I took a few pictures and yes, the motor drive is smoking fast. Fast enough that I could only do one set of pics, as the flash card was full after I was finished. However, that’s when my problems started. I am familar with the Canon A70 small camera and have played with the Digital Rebel and generally feel I can figure out technical things. Could I figure out how to delete a picture from the camera? Nope! There’s a delete button, and it pops up a question to delete or not, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to say ‘yes’. There’s no ‘set’ button, no agree or accept or anything like that. So I left the camera with a full flash card.
When I went back tonight and checked it out (again, I had to pick up a AAA battery charger) I saw there was an ‘Enter’ button, but at the time I didn’t see that.
Some things worked a bit backwards to what I expected as well, not a big deal, just different. For example, reviewing pictures you use the left and right arrows to display more/less information, and the up and down arrows to go to the previous and next images. Odd. Still, you want something that makes sense to your fingers in use as much as feels good in your hands, right?
Still, the D70 still just looks too big for me, even though it does come with a nice kit lense. Maybe when I finally get my *ist-D I’ll see if I can get a different lense for it with a bit more range. Oh well, time will tell.