Digital SLR Photography & Superzooms

Hi Geoff

I have a D70 and it is a lovely camera - I am still like a kid with a new toy trying out all the options it has !

I got it with the 18-70 DX lens and it is fine.

My next lens will be the macro DX lens as this is the one area my Coolpix 950 had the advantage.

I have never used "superzooms" so cannot comment on that.

Remember that there are other cameras out there and only you can make your own decision.........

I have an Olympus E1 which with two lenses with which I can go from 28mm to 400mm (35mmm equivalent) actual focal lengths are 14 to 200mmm)


The system works very well as it is designed from the ground up to be digital so no compromises between the requirements of 35mm lenses working with digital sensors.

Derek

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Geoff,

What do you intend using it for ?

The reason I ask is that, with the exception of some very expensive Canon/Kodak SLRs, all digital SLRs have a sensor that's smaller than a 35mm negative/transparency. This effectively increases the focal length of any lens you put on the camera - in the case of the Nikons I'm pretty sure they're all the same size sensor which has a 1.5x conversion factor - i.e. the 28-200 becomes the equivalent of a 42-300 lens in 35mm.

So, back to the original question - if you're interested in landscape photography then you're going to need a wider lens, such as the one long-time-dead has (which I believe is part of the D70 Kit ?). This will give you the 35mm equivalent of a 27mm lens. If you want to go wider than this it starts to get very expensive - in the case of the Nikon your only option would be the AFS DX 12-24 which is listed at £900 !!!

On the other hand if you're into sports or wildlife photography then the conversion factor starts to work for you - the ED 70-300 becomes the 35mm equivalent of a 105-450, and all for £330.....

Unless you have £5k to burn it's the same problem whichever make of camera you go for.

As for the D70 - I haven't used one (currently a Canon kind of guy...) but know several people who have them and they rave about them. For the price they do seem amazingly good.

If you want more info then try the following sites :

For Nikon - Ken Rockwell

For Canon - Andy Rouse

Hope this helps,
Mark

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any thoughts on so-called 'SuperZooms' - you know 28-200 mm etc.

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I think I can help a little with this one. I have a D100 and a 28-200 Nikon zoom. The lens is basically fine -- easy to handle, reliable, relatively inexpensive, lightweight. It does what I want for the most part. I've taken it backpacking in Grand Canyon more than once. Don't try that with heavier equipment.

It's generally not a substitute for some of the other zooms with smaller ranges. It's not a fast lens. Some chromatic aberration can be noticeable at high zoom factors. It's not quite as sharp as my 105mm Micro lens. The contrast may not be quite as good, either.

So the SuperZooms can be very handy, but they're no panacea. Like most things in life, there are trade-offs.

Phil

On superzooms: they usually have dreadful barrel distortion at the wide angle end; are ridiculously heavy when using the 28-50mm range (compare to a Leica 35mm gem); slow maximum aperture (especially at the longer focal lengths) requiring flash or tripod to avoid camera shake in lower light conditions (or else noisy fast digital 'ISO' settings). Splitting the range into something like 35-70mm and 70-210mm is more practical.

Nick

Thanks LongTime, Derek, Mark, Phil, Nick - more than meets the eye eh.
Judging by comments thus far, D70 still worth considering but maybe not superzoom. LongTimeDead how do you find picture quality on prints compared with 35mm?

Geoff

Geoff

What Nikon lenses do you have , are they compatible with a Nikon DSLR

Derek

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Derek

Nikon AF 35-80 & AF 70-300 zooms.As far as I know are compatible.

Geoff

I've posted before about this compatability issue between the D70 and Nikkors. It is more complicated than the reviewers would have you believe.

I managed to spend a few hours with a friend's D70 and a big bag of Nikon lenses. Nearly all the newer AF lenses work fine, but not all, one of his 10 year old AF zooms gives an error message and the camera refuses to fire.
About 70% of manual Nikkors work, but without any metering. This doesn't matter much as it takes no time to take a few trial shots to work out the exposure on the LCD screen. The remaining 30% give the error message and the camera won't fire.

The age of the lens seems to make no difference as some of my 30 year old Nikkors worked fine.

The camera is a bargain, but at the end of the day still can't produce an image quality that I'd want to enlarge enough to hang on my wall. Outperformed by bog standard 35 mm ASA 100 colour print film. I'll wait until I can afford the D2X.

Doc,

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Nearly all the newer AF lenses work fine, but not all, one of his 10 year old AF zooms gives an error message and the camera refuses to fire.
About 70% of manual Nikkors work, but without any metering.... The remaining 30% give the error message and the camera won't fire.

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Camera won't even fire? I've read lots about the lack of metering with MF lenses -- no surprise there -- but never a word about the camera not even letting you trip the shutter with some lenses. Any idea what's going on? It would be good to know since, if I get a D-SLR, it'll be a D70 as all others are out of my range.

Joe

Jekyll,

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When asked at a Nikon workshop, the demonstrator simply said "Yes, you have to buy a new flash unit".

The lack of retro flash compatability put me off buying the D70.

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Really? Not good news at all. As good as the D70 is, it seems Nikon is bent on abandoning its long-standing and much-touted backwards compatibility, at least in the amateur end of the line. Guess I'll be sticking with film until the just released D2x is obsolete and ancient enough that I can pick up a used for a song.

Joe

P.S. Didn't see this coming at all... Nikon has also just released a new professional film camera -- the F6. Gotta wonder how large the market is for a "better" F5, but it is nice to see that film isn't dead yet.

Chaps

You can easily pay a £1000.00 just for a new Leica lense and lense quality is what photography is all about, artistic content aside, of course.

Therefore how can a £1000 digital camera even compare to a Leica ?

I can accept the convenience factor but I still think top end digital has a lot of catching up to do compared to top end film.

Regards

Mick

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Originally posted by Mick Parry:
Therefore how can a £1000 digital camera even compare to a Leica ?

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Mick

Glad to see you back !

I don't think anyone in the thread ever made that comparison until you stated the obvious......

LTD

Thank you for your loving welcome.

I am trying to make the point that is it not better to spend ones lolly on good quality film cameras rather than digital, if top end photography and reproduction is your main goal.

Regards

Mick

What would you recommend, Mick, for someone who wants to accidentally photograph horse cock?

Matthew

A Leica.

Mick film cameras are dead. Kodak is to close one of its UK factories next year, with Harrow seemingly fast catching up.

Pick up any digital camera magazine and notice the reinvigoration of this market, Digital SLRs are the future and todays crop are fantastic.

Because you don't own one does not mean its a quality issue.

Leica are dead unless they seriously hop on board, and like it or lump it this is not a CD vs Record situation, the technology is getting better extremely fast. 33mm hasn't done a single thing in many many years, digital is pushing the limits of technology all the time, at the same time it is driving prices down through better manufacturing techniques and shear competition.

You are a business man you know the deal, play with your antique toy but stop going on about it lol.

Mick,

to give you an idea of where this technology is going, a couple of satellites have been launched recently with some incredible digital sensors - 600MPixels & 1GPixel.

I'm sure the camera subsystems cost £millions each, but we'll be buying them for £500 within a decade.

Fuji are making sensors with a wider dynamic range.

Fovean (sp?) are making sensors where every pixel captures R,G & B.

I'm not sure at the moment whether 35mm (or indeed any) film is more comparable with vinyl, or 78's.

The fundamental difference between digital imaging & digital audio is that the manufacturers of digital imaging have the freedom to build ever more extreme cameras, wheras with audio we're at the mercy of Sony & Philips deciding it's time to get people to re-buy their music collections again on a better medium.

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne (at) Dial.Pipex.com. Put "Naim" in the title.

Gary / Martin

I am not disputing that Digital is about to kill off film, but what I am saying is that a good quality lense is important to a good quality image.

Therefore, a digital camera must surely need the same high quality lense.

Regards

Mick

Agreed Mick

That is why the major manufacturers are all excelling in the digital domain, including Contax. It will only be time before Leica are forced to produce a digital SLR / Rangefinder - and bloody good it will be too !

Nikon are even resigned to producing dedicated lenses for their digital SLRs to address the problems of moire and vignetting when using their "normal" lenses.

I see a world where digital will provide for the majority, including the well-heeled, and traditional film will be reserved for large-format professional users.

What is the average printed size of the images you take with your Leica ?

LTD

You said

"I see a world where digital will provide for the majority, including the well-heeled, and traditional film will be reserved for large-format professional users."

I am inclined to agree with you. I shall hold on to my Leica because I like using it and my normal print size is 7" x 5" which means I am not using the camera to its full potential.

Regards

Mick

Sarah Montague interviewed Lord Lichfield recently on BBC R4, after the recent news about Kodak's demise with the rise and rise of digital photography.

I was surprised and more than a little amused that in response to the comment that digital was 'only any good for snapshots and paparazzi' (courtesy of some photographer whose name currently escapes me) he repsonded that he hadn't shot a reel of film in four years and that it saved him something like 80k(!) per annum in film costs.

Then there was the little problem of storing over a million negatives...

The writing is definitely on the wall, I feel, irrespective of the absolute quality issue (which almost always has a greater relationship to the man behind the camera than anything else).

He also pointed out that the old adage 'the camera never lies' isn't true anymore - is this the biggest loss from digital photography I wonder? Lots of ever more misleading images in our magazines and press?

Andy.

Addendum: The BBC interview is available here.

Quite an interesting listen, irrespective of your viewpoint, particularly the comments about taking portraits.

For the record the quote was from Terry O'Neill, it was 5 years of not using film and over 4 million negatives!

Andy.

Nice interview, cheers Andrew.

It is a shame that this type of photography is on its way out, but it is.

I am sure that Mick will get on board, but he like a *few* others have paid a lot of money into their medium, this does not make it the best, neither does it make it in-vunrable.

Kodak accept its over, Fuji and others realised a long time ago.

Companies that are not on board will become more and more distant from reality until they disappear, or start licensing themselves much as lecia have done for a few digital camera manufacturers (And BTW the lens were only comparable to theres, not better)