I finally broke down and bought the Nikon D70. Two things triggered me: B&H just got the camera in stock again, and Adobe released the new version of Camera Raw plug-in that supports the D70. As a result, I don't have to spend another $100 on Nikon's high-end RAW conversion software. After reading all the reviews, the major concern I had was moire, but the solution seems to be shooting raw and converting it yourself afterward. Since I never shoot JPEG if I can help it, anyway, I should be able to mostly avoid the moire problems. Everything else, in every other review I've read, is quite positive on the camera, particularly for the price, so I decided to go for it.

I'm getting two lenses: the "kit" 18-70mm lens, and the 105mm macro lens. That covers most of the ways that I like to use my current camera and then some. At some point in the future, I'll consider the 10.5mm fisheye and/or the 70-200 VR zoom, but I think I'm getting plenty enough to get me started. I also ordered the SB-800 flash-of-doom along with a set of gel filters so I can tune the flash color. The camera can trigger the flash wirelessly, which means I can do some fun work holding the flash in one hand and the camera in the other. All said and done, it's a fancy toy that I hope to continue using for a while to come.

My next purchase is going to be a camera bag. I assume I really need to handle these in person. Any brands I should make a point of examining? Any brands I should make a point of avoiding?

For camera bags, just keep in mind that there's no such thing as the bag. It's really just a bag, one of many you will have (eventually).

So don't get too obsessed with it, just find one that works for the body and accessories you have right now, and be happy. And plan on getting 2-3 more bags of differing sizes as time goes by.

Cheers

Houston Camera Exchange on Richmond ("Houston's last real camera store") has a huge selection of bags. I found a really nice Lowepro belt bag there for my new Nikon 5400.

My next purchase is going to be a camera bag. I assume I really need to handle these in person. Any brands I should make a point of examining?

Handling them in person is highly recommended. I have two bags, a largish Crumpler one which has the benefit of not looking like a camera bag.

http://www.crumplerusa.com/products/camerabag/tall_e.html



I can fit my Canon 10D and my three lenses into it (17-40L, 28-85 and 75-300) with some room to spare for other bits and pieces. If I had a flash there would just about be room for it in there as well.

I also have a smaller Lowepro bag for when I'm travelling light with one lens.

http://www.lowepro.com/pages/series/toploads/top_one.htm



The Crumpler is the better bag, excellent padding to protect stuff and big chunky bits of velco meaning you can quickly close it up without fiddling with the catches all the time.

They are both very well designed and made. I would recommend both brands.

I have a large assortment of various LowePro bags, including the TLZ1 that Andy has, and also a TLZ-mini that works fine with the 24-85mm with hood reversed.

But lots and lots of other bags as well.

My current carry-about is a LowePro Nova-3, which holds the D60 (10D predecessor) + grip, 24-70L, 16-35L, and 70-200-IS-L, plus TC-1, 50mm-1.4, 54MZ-3 flash, polarizers, spare batteries, cleaning kit, GPSr, cellphone, passport, and small cache goodies.

Cheers

there's no such thing as the bag

Feh. Is too. I've been using a Lowepro Off Road for the last 5-6 years. I got it because it seemed the sturdiest soft-shell bag available that wasn't a humongous back-pack, and it's served me quite well. I wanted something that I could take out on the trail with me while mountain biking. It's survived an adventure trip to Costa Rica (three lenses + body + filters + film + mini-tripod + small tripod strapped underneath), and a trip to India (much less than previous trip). I honestly haven't wanted or needed a second bag.

I'd agree with the Crumpler bag as a good choice, I got one with my Canon 300D. It's really really well made.

I'm planning on getting one of the larger ones so I can take my laptop along on my Euro Trip this summer.

Cheers

Cris.

My new camera is finally here. I spent a bunch of time running around yesterday shooting things to play with the camera. Short thoughts:

- The camera's GUI is extremely powerful. Somebody who doesn't know a lot about both photography and color management is going to be snowed if they try to really wrap their brain around this camera. The GUI is tuned to the professional, not the amateur. That's great for me, but I can see a lot of Nikon's customers getting very, very confused.

- The SB-800 flash is amazing. I put my camera in "commander" mode and hand-held the flash to the side. WIthout trying too hard, I was able to shoot this:



I did the raw conversion using Adobe Camera Raw, which gives much better control than Nikon's free software (I don't know if I want to spend $100 of the fancy software). I used the eyedropper on the label to say "this is white" and it made some subtle corrections. The default Nikon conversion had the label looking blue-ish.

- The Nikon software sucks. I always thought, by looking at the various reviews, that Nikon was doing much better than Canon. Boy was I confused. It's certainly prettier than Canon software, but it just fails at letting me do my workflow my way. The one Canon ZoomBrowser feature that I liked, and which Nikon cannot reproduce: I want to be able to import any "new" pictures from my card and drop them into folders that are dated according to the shooting date, not the import date. Nikon's software doesn't seem to know how to do it. Now, there are plenty of EXIF tools out there, but they're all about JPEG or TIFF. I doubt they'll be able to comprehend Nikon NEF files.

Incidentally, I just tried cam2pc, which was recommended in our earlier thread about Canon's ZoomBrowser. cam2pc knows how to put files in a directory based on their shooting date, but it only works properly with JPEG files. All the others get dumped unceremoniously into 1980_01_01. Likewise, there's no way (that I could see) to only download "new" files.

*sigh*

You could try submitting an RFE. Actually, if it puts it in 1980_01_01, that sounds more like a bug. Out of curiosity, does it have EXIF tags or is there some other metadata format being used?

Out of curiosity, does it have EXIF tags or is there some other metadata format being used?

I have no idea. We're talking about Nikon's proprietary raw file format, so it's unsurprising that it's not supported directly by generic tools.