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Skin tones

One test always requested is comparison of skin tones. As the Pro 70 doesn't have a built-in flash and the 380EX speedlight would easily outperform the 950's built in flash (note however that the 950 can be connected to Nikons excellent SB28 speedlight, and would be a good match for the Canon) the image below was taken with daylight through a window.

Nikon Coolpix 950	Canon Powershot Pro 70

The above images show that the 950 seemed to (1) have less accurate whitebalance (2) oversaturate and (3) have a slightly yellow cast - related to (1). Also the Pro70 produced more natural (although not quite as saturated) colours.

Timings

To test how fast the cameras are I took five shots in succession, one shot counted as finger off the shutter release then fully down, up and take the next shot as soon as possible. The timer stopped when all the images had been stored on the card.

The 950 won this hands down because of it's large (reported 48MB) internal buffer, with the camera set to FAST REVIEW I could take one shot roughly every 1.5 - 2 seconds, but after that the green indicator would flash until it had emptied its buffers (saved the images to the CF card).

Pro70 time to take and store five shots: 36 seconds
Coolpix 950 time to take and store five shots: 25 seconds
(only took the 950 about 8 seconds to take the shots, the remaining 17 seconds was storage time)

The 950 does feel faster than the Pro 70 and because of the 950s continuous focusing (which can be disabled) its normally more "ready for the shot" than the Pro 70. Overall the 950 is the faster machine.

More shots

Nikon Coolpix 950	Canon Powershot Pro 70

Here's where comparing images gets a little more difficult. The basic point of fact about these two cameras is there's very little to choose between them when it comes to image quality and unless you have both cameras with you it'd be difficult to tell one image from the other (except for the difference in aspect ratio).

In the side-by side gallery (below) each shot has been taken once with the Nikon Coolpix 950 and once with the Canon Powershot Pro 70, you'll find the camera and exposure information below the image (main frame), you can click on a large image to view the original (full-sized) image.

You can find an additional 32 samples side-by-side here

Remember there are nearly 100 images from both cameras in the galleries