Considering widening price gap: Nikon D70s or D80? Your choice?

Answer 1

The D80 has a long list of extras but the only improvements that matter to me are:
* The larger viewfinder. This might sound trivial, but the viewfinder is your most important interface. A larger viewfinder makes for a much more pleasant experience.
* !0 megapixels vs. 6. Six megapixels will suffice for a full page print, but more is better. Ten megapixels allows for tighter cropping and/ or larger prints.
If money is not an issue, just get the D80 - the higher price is fully justified. But if money IS an issue - eg, if you had to settle for a cheaper lens if you got the D80 - spend on the lens and economize on the body! The lens will determine your image quality.
BTW, the 18-70mm that came/ comes as a kit with the D70s is a very decent lens and good value for money. The 18-135mm that's often bundled with the D80 costs about the same retail, but its inferior in terms of image quality and build quality.

Answer 2

You have good answers above from all three, but OMG hits the nail on the head. If you have a limited budget, it may be more important to alocate properly for a good lens. Faceit. You will be buying a new camera body in 5 years, but your lenses can last a lifetime.

What I do when evaluating things like this is to make a list of all of the "canidates" in top-to-bottom order and then just buy the first one on the list that I can afford. The near-$300 price gap is quite a bit to overcome, I admit.

I own a D70s, which lives in the office, and a D200, which lives at home. I have occasion to use the D70s as a "normal" camera with the great 19-70 lens and I find myself looking at it and asking, "Why can't you do [such-and-such] the way the D200 can?" Once you have the extra features, you forget that they are "extra" and just take them for granted.

Another way to look at this, to speak out of both sides of my mouth, would be to buy the D80 and the "basic" 18-55 kit lens. This means you are "only" paying about $100 for the lens, so you wouldn't feel bad about abandoning it (or relegating it to "spare" duty) in a few months when you can buy a killer lens. I have a friend who I advised this way when he was trying to decide between the D70s and the D200. He wanted a camera to take into the woods for wildlife photography, though, and I didn't think the D70s was up to the task from the standpoint of durability or features.

You see? I can't make up my mind either. My GUT says to buy the D80, but I'm not paying for it!

Answer 3

D80 - no doubt. The D80 has many advantages over the older D70. I really like the autosensor array in the D80 and, after some trying some portrait shoots, wouldl love to have that pattern in my camera (I have a D50 which has a similar sensor array to the 70). The D80 is almost like a D200 without the more rugged construction.

Answer 4

I paid the extra for the D80. Just look through the view finders side by side. That will sell you on the D80 all by itself