New Camera

Hello,
Hopefully you guys and gals can answer me a few question...
I’m looking to buy a digital SLR (I’ve currently got an old Nikon Compact Digital which is pretty rubbish)
I’ve narrowed down to the Canon 300D or the Nikon D70, the Nikon seems a better featured camera but more expensive although the 300D seems a damn fine camera too....

Firstly with regards to lenses... One of the big issues I have with my current compact is the lack of aperture range particularly smaller depth of field for portrait photography etc. is the lens that comes with the 300D any good, or would I be better just buying the body and a separate lens, if so any recommendations?

Has the lack of being able to select metering been and major issue for people?
Ive herd that you can hack the firmware and get back quite a few features disable... Dose the hack allow for you to select the metering?

Finaly I know most people here will be biased but to thouse who were thinking of get either the D70 or 300D and went for the 300D would you do it again?

Thanks in advance.

Well I don't want to start a fight (see the 300d vs. d70 thread) but I have the D70 and think its great. For me it was definately the right purchase. However I'm sure you'll find plenty of 300d owners prepared to say the same thing about their camera.

As you say the d70 has more features and is more expensive. I guess you need to decide whether you think the extra features are worth the extra money. I found http://www.dpreview.co​m amongst other websites pretty useful in making my decision.

One possible consideration is that the d70 kit lense it pretty good and will give you a sufficiently tight DOF for portrait work. I've heard other people on this forum say that the 300d kit lens isn't much good, but as I don't own one I couldn't really comment.

I hope this helps.

BB

yeah... thanks, I really don't want to get into a 'mines bigger than yours' situation... just interested in the opinion of users.. so thanks!

It would seem that if you shop around you can pickup the D70 for about £120UK more than the 300D both with the lens kit.... and from what ive read so far im thinking the feature set and lense quality may persuade me to spend that bit extra.

Just on that point of lens quality of the standard kit lense... any 300D people care to coment.... im still wondering if a body only and seperate lense might be the way to go?

When I bought mine it was about £200 more in Jessops I but persuaded them to throw in a 1gb memory card, a case and a few other odds and sods.

I don't know which one is better -- a D70 or a 300D. But Nikon's user has a faster response.

I have the DRebel with the kit lens and I like it very much (considering how cheap it was). However, if I could have afforded it I would have gotten the body alone plus maybe the 17-40mm L. Or the 10D with a more generic lens.

I was watching the Olympic trials last night on TV (actually, looking at the cameras at the trials) and noticed that the good ol' "white lens" outnumbered black ones by at least 10 to 1. There must be a reason why so many "pros" go with Canon over Nikon. This being said, don't only think of your current purchase, but what you may want to get 10 years down the road. I went with the 300D and haven't at all regretted it.

As someone said in a post a few months ago, you need to add at least $1000 on to the initial price of the camera. I didn't believe this, but it happened. Within a month I already had a second lens, spare battery, new bag, new cleaning supplies, filters, etc. Had I gone with a more expensive camera I'd not have any toys to go with it.

The D70 won me over. I had a Coolpix 5700 and hated it. When I got my hands on the D70 I knew this was the camera for me. The kit lens is great! I tried out the drebel because I had some Canon lenses from a old rebel I had. The speed of the camera was almost as disappointing as the 5700. The 10D was a possibility from the day it was released, but I could not get one right away so I got the 5700 instead for my own wedding. The 10D still seamed like an option but the price for the body alone was still high.
The Nikon has great speed. Everyone talks about the metal body of the 10D but I prefer a lighter load. I've owend 4 digital cameras so far never dropped one! I'm carefull with my stuff. The buffer is equal and speed for writing to the card is faster with the D70. I have a 1GB ultra II and (4) 256MB 12x cards. I have 5 autofocus points instead of 7. The D70 has three color modes with user cusom curves. Lossless compression in NEF RAW which makes the file sizes smaller 4.5mb to 6mb per file with no loss in quality--more room on the compact flash for more shots! The flash on the D70 rocks! 8)
With the D70 you won't get a vertical grip. I was worried about not having iso100 but iso200 does the job!

If you can wait I'm sure the 10D replacement will put them all to shame!

Scott W.

Chazs wrote:
I was watching the Olympic trials last night on TV (actually, looking at the cameras at the trials) and noticed that the good ol' "white lens" outnumbered black ones by at least 10 to 1. There must be a reason why so many "pros" go with Canon over Nikon. This being said, don't only think of your current purchase, but what you may want to get 10 years down the road. I went with the 300D and haven't at all regretted it.

As someone said in a post a few months ago, you need to add at least $1000 on to the initial price of the camera. I didn't believe this, but it happened. Within a month I already had a second lens, spare battery, new bag, new cleaning supplies, filters, etc. Had I gone with a more expensive camera I'd not have any toys to go with it.

Some of those good old white lense could have been Nikon as they now make all their telephoto glass in white as well as traditional black. Heaven forbid there could have been a few Minolta shooters as they make white glass too!

Nikon lenses and accessory are generally more expensive than Canon ones for a similar level of quality... This must be taken into consideration.

I have a similar thread. See here: https://photography-on-the.net …topic.php?p=250​534#250534

Cheers for all the replys....
yeah dwc, speed is one of the main reasons i hate my current Nikon compact... by the time its focused and taken the shot after pressing the button the moment has long since passed!

I must admitt after looking at the samples and review on dpreview.com I think the image quality of the canon is nicer.... does anyone have a problem with shutterlag or startup time?

I brought this up in another post about the differences between the sharpness of lenses but they ended up comparing Nikon and Canon. Per what everyone said they have different types of sensors. Here is the post:

https://photography-on-the.net …ad.php?t=35574&​highlight=

After looking closely at the pictures from both cameras I agree with what everyone said, the NIkon is sharper but the color is much better in the Canon. I can't be impartial because I have a DRebel but I do agree, I can sharpen in Photoshop but I can't get color that was never recorded!! Hope this helps a little!