"Sheldon" wrote in message
...
I got my D70 today. I've just been using it in Auto mode, and tried some
of my older Nikon lenses on it in manual mode. So far my impressions are
that it is extremely fast, both focusing and shooting. It feels like a
"real" camera, very solid and nice to hold. JPEG photos look very good,
but it's gonna take me awhile to get past the learning curve. Also, the
controls seem to be well placed, including all the buttons. Everything
just seems to fall into place when you hold it.


snip

Also, hard to get used to the Auto feature lowering the shutter speed to
the point where you can't hand-hold it. I'm learning.



Sheldon,

From one newbie to another, I just went through the same learning curve with
my Canon 300D. I made the mistake of starting out in Auto mode and was very
disappointed. Soon there after I moved to Program mode, gained back the
control I had with my manual camera and haven't gone back to Auto since.
I've been very happy.

The second thing I did was to start shooting in RAW mode and using Capture
One for RAW image manipulation and conversion. After C1, I use Photoshop
for any further editing, although my PS skills are very limited. Note that
PScs has RAW conversion built (free download) in but I have PS7.

In any event, the quality of the final images are much better then anything
I was able to get from Auto mode.

--

Rob