Great kick off to an automatic SLR world
Written: Dec 06 '00 (Updated Dec 06 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good features, handling, reliability
Cons: no depth of preview, plastic body
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| kundansen's Full Review: Nikon N70 Film Camera |
If you are looking for an automatic SLR with good features but without a professional pricetag, your search may have ended.
I had a very old Pentax K1000 before this camera. At the time I bought
it, it was the most recent Nikon product. I have used it for quite some
time now, and am still very satisfied with the value for money it has given me.
What are the key features? The best way to find that out is to visit the Nikon website (http://www.nikonusa.com). In brief, several automatic picture modes (like night, silhouette, closeup, portrait, sports, etc.) that set up the exposure/ aperture combination to a pretty good judgement. The night, for example, will try a medium aperture (usually f8) and a long exposure (~2s) to capture night scenes in a pleasing manner.
Features I like
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The real advantage of this over many other cameras in the comparable price-range is this Exposure Wheel under the right thumb that lets you scroll through aperture/shutter speed pairs keeping exposure level constant. This is the feature I use most frequently - many, many times more than the auto-programming modes. Compose the picture, and lightly press on the shutter (Oh - the shutter is very, very soft - nearly feather touch - it will take some getting used to pressing it ever so lightly so as to not end up taking a false picture). As soon as the shutter is in the half-shutter position, the camera will give the exposure readings in the viewfinder (and repeat it on the lcd). Now, say you get
f2.8/1" for a night scene, and you want a greater depth of field (and thus
a smaller aperture) - just rotate the wheel, and scroll through the other
options (I'm just guessing here - please don't take this to be a valid
combination) - so you rotate in steps, like f4/2", f8/15", f22/30", till
you find something you like. Now you depress the shutter all the way to
carry out your choice.
The camera has excellent balance and handling - and the buttons are all in the right places. The aperture lock is right next to the wheel below the right thumb, so you can't use them both together, but you can take the reading, rotate the wheel, decide on the aperture, and lock it, so then you don't have to rotate the wheel again. The half shutter position is also the focus lock.
Focusing is essentially done on maximum-contrast-difference in sampling area - in the spot focus mode, it will focus on the sharpest contrast within the small spot area, while in the wide angle auto-focus, it will select the sharpest contrast in the entire bracketed area. This means that if you want a picture of the clear blue sky with nothing in it, or something similar that lacks any contract whatsoever, the auto-focus will fail, and you'll either need to shift to manual focus, or focus on some other object at a similar distance and use the focus lock.
The camera works well in exposure bracketing, aperture priority, shutter priority, and fully manual modes. The camera meter assists exposure setting in full manual mode.
Features I miss
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1. Depth of field preview button - so that you can see what all is going to be in sharp focus
2. Monitor pre-flash - for auto-exposure in dark environments. The new N65 has this - in the N70, if it's too dark, the camera will fail to focus and set up the exposure, and will surrender itself to you - at which point, you'll have to sharpen your instincts and shift to the full manual mode.
3. Split screen focusing - I really like the split screen focusing screens in the older manual cameras - this has the matte screen, not as good for manual focusing. Anyway, this is not really important, since the auto- focus does an excellent and fast job of focusing.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kundansen
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Member: Kundan Sen
Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 29
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
Analyst, with photography, traveling, music, and computer games as top hobbies.
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