Nikon D70 Digital SLR:
Popular Photography and Imaging's
2004 Camera of the Year.
[ Photo: Amazon.com ]

Popular Photography and Imaging is out with their 2004 Camera of the Year Award, and the winner is the Nikon D70 Digital SLR Camera. The editors said that the D70 adds "some sophistication, features, fine-tuning, and, well, 'maturity' to what the {Canon EOS Digital Rebel} had wrought". The Canon Digital Rebel came out at the end of 2003.

I like the Nikon D70 because it reminds me of my Nikon N50 film SLR, both in terms of its form and in how the controls are laid out on top. The control layout is two generations newer than mine, but I feel like I understand most of it intuitively.

I look to publications like Popular Photography and Imaging for insights like the D70's color accuracy is "the best of any digital SLR {they've} ever tested", and that it has "a burst mode that gives you more than a dozen fine-quality JPEGs at 3 frames per second."

I'm looking forward to the day that I can afford to spend $1,000 for a prosumer digital SLR body. (There's a long way to go before I get there, in some respects.) As far as I'm concerned, the D70 and the Canon Digital Rebel are both fantastic cameras-- if you're choosing between the two, you probably already have a manufacturer preference.