Finally going digital

I borrowed a Nikon D70 SLR from a friend for the weekend. It's about time to switch to digital. D70 is Nikon's cheapest digital SLR and when it was originally announced (January 2004) it was the answer to the new sub-$1,000 digital SLR market, its apparent competitor being the Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel. The D70 features six megapixel CCD sensor and Multi-CAM900 auto focus system. I took some pictures around downtown Toronto (Dundas Square and CN Tower), and some animals and kids.

I also tested my telephoto lens. The lens has focal length of 70-300mm, but the photo taken on digital camera and film camera is different due to the crop factor. Crop factor comes from the fact that the CCD sensor is smaller than the a frame of 35mm film camera. The digital slr crops out the center portion of a given lenses field of view, but the image is still at the full resolution of the digital sensor. The angle of view is reduced to the same as that of a lens of 1.5 or 1.6 times greater focal length on a 35mm format camera, which means that picture taken with my 300mm lens looks like a photo taken with 450mm lens on film camera. That allows for some good looking macro shots of flowers, wood or a squirrel :-)

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