Compared to...

Nikon D70 vs. Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel)

Outdoor scene comparison (ISO 200, JPEG)

The following shot is of Tower Bridge, London. The D70 image was taken first and then the tripod was moved backwards a little before taking the EOS 300D shot to compensate for the difference between the D70's 1.5x FOV crop and the EOS 300D's 1.6x FOV crop. ISO 200 was chosen on the EOS 300D for a direct comparison to the D70. Shots were taken so that each camera produced the identical frame coverage. Bear in mind that the EOS 300D has a vertical advantage of 48 pixels (2.4% more).

Note that in this comparison the EOS 300D appears to be approximately 0.3 EV (a third of a stop) more sensitive than the D70 at ISO 200 (to produced approximately the same output image brightness, although the cameras clearly have different tone curves).

Remember we proved in our EOS 300D review that there is virtually no difference in image quality between the EOS 300D and EOS 10D (apart from the default image parameters) thus the image quality comparison below and on the following three pages can also apply to the D70 vs. EOS 10D.

Camera settings:

• Nikon D70: Nikkor 50 mm F1.4 D, Aperture Priority, ISO 200, JPEG Large/Fine,
  Auto WB, Default Parameters ('Normal')
   
• Canon EOS 300D: Canon EF 50 mm F1.4, Aperture Priority, ISO 200, JPEG Large/Fine,
  Auto WB, Default Parameters ('Parameter 1')

Nikon D70	Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel)
ISO 200, 1/500 sec, F9	ISO 200, 1/640 sec, F9
2,819 KB JPEG (3008 x 2000)	3,377 KB JPEG (3072 x 2048)

The first thing you notice is the difference in color balance between the two cameras, in this respect the D70 is more accurate, the EOS 300D's image looking warmer than it did in real life, the D70's greys are almost perfectly grey. The D70's colors also look slightly more saturated than the 300D. For absolute resolution it's very close, although there are definitely some areas of the image where the D70 has resolved more detail (and appears sharper) than the EOS 300D. To counter that we do have a little moiré appearing in the D70 image (although really nothing that spoils the appearance of the image).

One notable difference is that the D70's sharpening algorithm appears to be better than that of the EOS 300D, there are almost no visible sharpening halos in the D70 image, there are some in the EOS 300D image.

Lastly there does appear to be some noise visible in the sky of the D70 image (approx. 1.75 std dev), less so in the EOS 300D image (approx. 1.10 std dev) this is consistent with our ISO noise measurements presented earlier in this review. Remember that the EOS 300D does offer ISO 100 which will deliver even cleaner images with virtually no visible noise.