Upgrading from D70

[Michael Lyons]

I recently got a d200 to replace my d70, OMG I love it

 

[InitialD]

With the D200 over a year old already, I'd be nervous spending $1400 and then have Nikon release another significant upgrade in their D-SLR line.

Bodies come and go. Buy what you can shoot NOW and be happy with it.

Another option I was toying with was picking up a D50 body on eBay. I've been seeing these things go for next to nothing and that would give me an extra body to keep a wide lens on while keeping a telephoto zoom (hopefully a 80-200 F2.8 soon!) on the D70.

That's an idea. But going with For me it was a little different. I was looking to complement my D2Hs body. Big body for small body. Low MP for high MP. When I need to use it at high ISO, I can use either camera in a pinch. Don't get me wrong as I love my D70 too. Just thought it was nearing it's useful life and that a higher MP and newer body was timely since the D70 has already clocked close to 30k pics. I was pretty surprised that the AF on the D40x was pretty zippy. Better than on the D70 from what I can tell.

So I traded in my D70 for a D40x to be used more for fun holiday pics and maybe some serious landscape stuff. I plan to use it as a 2nd body and stick wide angle lenses like the Sigma 10-20 on it and also the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 for unobstrusive street photography that does not attract too much attention. The plan is to complement my D2Hs which will be used for serious stuff.

 

[InitialD]

Remember no one is guaranteed tomorrow, I know that for a fact as 4 years ago the women I thought I'd spend the rest of my life with died very suddenly. Be prudent but live well.

Great advise Jeff. So sorry about your loss...

 

[ultimind]

I love the compactness of the D40 but just about any lens you throw on it (that's AF-S) is going to make it nearly as bulky as a D50 with the same lens. D50 is fairly compact compared to the D70 though..and cheaper than the D40! It would be nice to keep a 16mm or 10.5mm lens on a D50 body. I already own the 10.5mm from doing extreme sports photography a few years ago, and remapping the images with Fisheye Hemi or a rectallinear converter makes them very usable and since I already own the lens...much cheaper than buying a new 12-24. F2.8 too!

 

[InitialD]

I love the compactness of the D40 but just about any lens you throw on it (that's AF-S) is going to make it nearly as bulky as a D50 with the same lens.

Yeah, one way of looking at it. But D50 is the same tech as the D70. A D40 sensor is the same as D50/D70 but with better with better in-camera algorithm and better high ISO pics. A D40x however has a D80 sensor in a much smaller footprint. And going by Thom's reviews, the D40x has better high ISO performance as did a test by another fellow Cafe member.

 

[gugs]

I like the D200 a lot over the D70 (I am using both) because of the following:
- more accurate exposure, more keepers
- ability to use my AIS lenses
- 5fps
- better user interface (main commands immediately available/large buttons)
- much better viewfinder and LCD screen (very important to me)
- better AF, higher resolution,...
The first four are not true for the D80... so personally I would recommend the D200 over the D80

 

[hkgharry]

I have a D50 and needed an additional camera for the family. I chose the D200 over the D80 or D40(x) or used D1h or D2h. Three thoughts:

1) Your original question seemed to be around whether the D200 or d80 image quality would be noticably better than the D70. Hard to say exactly how, but to me the images from the D200 look different (better) than what I got from the D50 (which were already very good to me). Maybe it's something in the sensor, or the metering or focus, or maybe just my imagination. Definitely more pixels to crop from though.

2) In addition to the pictures looking better (not a lot, just a bit) I like the following comparing the D200 to the D50 -
#1 MLU especially for long telephoto shots (the main reason for me getting the D200 over the D80 or D40)
#2 LCD - larger with RGB histogram and better zooming (higher magnification and zoom with one button)
#3 Viewfinder - larger, more focus points to choose from, easier to manual focus
#4 Surprisingly, high-ISO performance. Zooming to 100% on a ISO 1600 shot was a bit of a shock the first time - could see more noise than from the D50, but somehow the noise doesn't show as much on prints as the D50 did.
# 5 Many other things from the feel, to the 5 fps, to how it works with non-CPU lenses, and many other features.

3) Things which I wondered about but (so far) have not turned out to be issues
#1) High-iso noise. Mentioned above. I've fooled around with pushing ISO 3200 shots to 12800 in Nikon NX and to me they can be (not great but) still usable. Wow. The D200 images just seem to take processing better than those from the D50.
#2 Slow post-processing. I use compressed raw and the processing speed in NX is still quite acceptable to me, but I don't batch hundreds of files.
#3 The 10 megapixels making my existing technique and lenses look bad. I haven't noticed any problems and I seem to be able to handhold to slower speeds than I can with the D50.

I have no regrets about getting the D200. I love using the D50 and the D200 now even more so. Good luck with your choices.