The Nikon D70 has been out for a bit over a year now, and has been considered by many to be one of the best low-to-mid range digital SLR cameras on the market. Despite how well it performs, Nikon decided to improve upon it with the release of the D70s. This isn’t a total remake or an entirely new camera, but rather a D70 which has been notably improved upon.
While the 6.1 megapixel CCD doesn’t exactly offer the most pixels for the price range this camera falls under, the image quality offered and the fact that the camera is a very fast performer are enough to justify the lower pixel count of the camera. For image compression, the D70s can take pictures in JPEG normal, fine, NEF (12 bit raw), and NEF+JPEG Normal with image sizes going as high as 3008×2000 pixels. The image size is one of the first things most people coming in from point-and-shoot cameras will notice. The camera doesn’t use the 4:3 aspect ratios of most point-and-shoot cameras. Instead, you will be using the standard 3:2 ratio used by film cameras. This is due to the fact that the D70s relies on lenses that were originally meant for film cameras. This serves the additional purpose of not requiring you to crop your images if you want to output to a standard print size. For image sensitivity, you have the choice of 10 ISO settings ranging from ISO200 to ISO1600. The camera performs incredibly well in each of them as you will see later in the test samples.
The D70s also features one of the most powerful continuous shooting modes in its price segment. In theory, the camera is capable of 144 pictures at 3 shots per second. Granted, the number of shots and the speed at which you shoot is dependant on the image compression you use and the speed of your CF card. While I never really needed to fill the camera with this many shots, it did manage around 2.5 shots per second in jpeg fine. Sports photographers will find this to be an excellent feature since it’ll allow you to take action shots of extended sequences. It might be just enough to get a shot of a critical moment in a football play.