gear

THE DIGITAL SOAPBOX OF ANDY CLEAVENGER

NIKON D70

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Email:  graycard18@gmail.com

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This is the camera I used to use for all of my personal photography (including the collage work). We had two. Unfortunately, mine lost its mind about a year ago. In its place I’ve been using a D200. An improvement, yes, but alas... I have caught the FX bug and am now counting the pennies in the swear jar and hoping that a few more trips around the capital beltway will swell its coffers enough for a D700. If today’s traffic is any indication, a couple more laps should do it.

Before this camera lost its mind it was pretty good to us, really. My wife used them to shoot weddings for at least three seasons. They have gone with us to India, Alaska, family reunions, and nearly every trip downtown. They were solid performers despite their age.

They were small, quiet, lightweight, and actually pretty durable in their own way. I was as surprised as anyone about this last part. I’ve actually come to see the plastic body as an advantage to a certain extent. Yes, I prefer the feel of a layer of rubber over a metal frame, but I’ve seen that rubber start to peel off the frame a number of times now on both a D200 and a D2X. And gluing it back on with automobile weather stripping is not fun. It’s kind of nice knowing that I will never have to do that with the D70.

Another thing that makes this a good travel camera is the fact that it’s a 6 megapixel camera, not 10 or 12. This means I get around 350 images on a 2GB card. If I were shooting a D200 I wouldn’t be able to get that many images on a 4GB card unless I were shooting JPEG (which I will never do...  I love RAW. I need RAW) or I were shooting compressed RAW (still too chicken to try it). I know some people who have tried using compressed RAW and they say they can’t see a difference, but I’m just not sure if I care to risk it. Only once or twice a year do I shoot enough images in one sitting to actually fill a card to capacity, so it’s not like I’m hurting for disk space. And since I’ve never had a problem with normal RAW I ain’t gonna fix what ain’t broke.

Eventually, I will upgrade to a DSLR that is a bit more substantial. Either I’ll inherit one of my wife’s D200’s when she gets a new camera, or I’ll break down and just buy myself a D700. When I do finally get that new camera I want to convert our remaining D70 to shoot Infrared. I’ve been wanting to do that for ages. I never really got the chance to play around with Infrared film in school. It was too demanding and unpredictable to depend on for delivering an assignment on time. This will be an awesome way to finally enjoy IR.