I have narrowed my search for a digi camera to the Canon Proshot 70, the Olympus D620L, or the Nikon 950. I have not been able to decied which one of the three I would be best off with. Suggestions? Each has unique features Canon: Fold out LCD, Oly: TTL viewfinder, and Nikon: outstanding 2.3 mega pixel. I'd automatically choose the Nikon, but I am not a fan of the offset viewfinder, common in most digi cams If only I could have the TTL from the Oly, the fold out LCD in the Canon, and the 2.3Mp from the Nikon. Some decide for me :) Thanks

-- David Erskine (davide@netquest.com), July 05, 1999

Answers

David,

If you look a little lower on the messages you'll see mine titled "Olympus or Canon for Studio Product Photograhy (Clark Linehan, 1999- 07-02)" So I'm on the horns of the same dilemma.

Personally I don't like a number of things in the design of the Nikon. They're almost too many to list... The swivel body, location of the card door and tripod thread, multitude of complaints of users about lockups and low visibility of the lcd are the first things that come to mind.

That narrowed it to the Olympus and Canon and from there you can take a look at what's in my message thread. I'm still leaning toward the Canon.

Clark

-- Clark Linehan (clinehan@shore.net), July 06, 1999.

Hi Guys- I have a Nikon 950 and a Canon Pro 70, I also had an olympus 600. If your goal is the best camera for studio photography when using strobes, I would say the 950 wins hands down. The Canon has no white balance lock, so repeatable results are impossible. The Nikon has very good blue channel noise and that awesome macro capability. Overall i find the images from the Nikon really clean up nicely and I have used mine for lots and lots of assignments. The Pro 70 is a great package and excellent LCD, but I don't need that 35mm llike aspect ratio, so the usable resolution is a little small. When resized in Photoshop it gets to 1200 pixels high it gets a little grainy compared to the Nikon. The Olympus is a little soft and exhibits a lot of color matrix noise.

The Nikon does have that stupid CF door design, but given the results I am getting from a sub-$1K camera, it's kind of hard to complain. I use Balcar strobes and a Quantum radio slave to sync the 950 and have had no problems. Correctly treated in Photoshop the Nikon files are actually comparable to 1200 dpi 35mm film scans. I don't think that you would be doing yourself a disservice with the Pro 70, but the Nikon is really packed with cool features. Once you climb the learning curve you'll find that you use those features almost every shoot. I hardly use the pro 70 since the Nikon arrived. I wouldnt buy the Olympus since the image quality from the Canon and Nikon are quite a bit higher.

-- Jay Abend (Jayphoto@concentric.net), July 06, 1999.