My Nikon D70 – The Best of What’s Around

For over a year, I have worried that my Nikon D70 will just die.  I have taken well over 100,000 images with it.  I can no longer count them because round about February, the weird end-of-file errors turned into an image saving problem.  I can no longer just leave the actual file numbers as my file names because every time I stop shooting, the camera starts a new folder & renames the images within starting at DSC_0001.  For instance, if I take pictures of 15 different things while I am driving, I will have 15 files named “DSC_0001,” each of them in a separate folder.  While this makes uploading files to the pc way longer than it used to, it is highly tolerable but less fun than my April problem.  That is when the lcd screen died.  Luckily, the camera was set at ISO 200 & shady white balance at the time so I can still use it for daytime driving shots. 

While I would prefer to shoot manual (except for focus), I have relegated myself to aperature priority mode.  For live shows, I have to use manual mode or Nikon will pretend there is only enough light to shoot at one second shutter speeds & that just won’t work.  For shows with really great light, I can get away with 1/60.

(C) Conn!

 For shows with no light, I am stuck using a flash (where allowed).   This is where I have the most fun.  Not only do I have to set the flash, but I also have to figure out a good angle for it to bounce & an appropriate shutter speed & aperture.  It is a crap shoot, almost like shooting film.  Almost.  Unfortunately, I now want to only edit the Nikon show photos because I already saw the Canon ones & know that I don’t like them.  The Canon has been soft focusing & pretty slow lately.  It is probably going to die soon too.  I just hope that it lingers the way the Nikon has been doing because I really like coming home to images like this.