The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

( - 1/26/05) I bought this as a backup for my Nikon D100. Most of my photos are back-country winter landscapes, and full daylight images are nearly as satisfactory as those produced by the SLR. In my view, however, there are some troubling flaws. (1) White balance settings/color temperature, especially in overcast conditions are disappointingly inaccurate. Absent using the custom white-balance setting (which only partially corrects the problem), snow has either a reddish cast or a bluish cast. This is easily corrected if one shoots in RAW and adjusts the color temperature by 500 to 1000 degreesK or (better) uses the white color sampling tool in Photoshop > adjustments > levels. But, the problem is annoying, nonetheless, most especially because it would seem to be easily corrected by tweaking the color temperature in the white balance firmware. (2) The manual focus is very poor. The LED inset window used for focusing is so grainy and so dark that it is very difficult to know when the subject is in focus, and the autofocus assist to manual focus simply does not work well. After taking dozens of test shots, I have yet to get as sharp a focus using either the manual focus or the manual focus / autofocus assist as I get simply using the autofocus. (3) Ergonomic flaws. The lens cover extends too far to the right when open. The placement of the manual focus (MF) button is mounted on the left side side of the camera. When the MF button is pressed, the user must necessarily steady the camera with support on the right side. Unless the user is very careful (AND, not wearing gloves), the right hand touches the lens cover and shuts the camera off. Another flaw is the placement of the upper and lower indicator lights. They are mounted so close to the viewfinder that one cannot tell which one is blinking. The upper blinks orange to indicate slow shutter speed and the risk of camera shake; the lower blinks yellow to indicate focusing difficulty, but with one's eye at the viewfinder, the lights are detected by peripheral vision, which has poor color discrimination (relative poverty of color-sensitive cone cells). (4) The wide-angle capability of the S70 is an appealing feature, and fully met my expectations for the landscapes I shoot. I anticipated the trade-off in telephoto capability, but I did not anticipate how quickly the speed of the lens declines as one zooms in. It cranks from f2.8 to f5.3 very quickly, and the range of ISO settings (50-400) is not sufficient to compensate. This is especially difficult in manual mode, which for some unexplained reason, does not include an EV compensation option. Nor does manual mode have a flash EV compensation adjustment. When using flash in manual mode one can only adjust the flash output intensity (1/3, 2/3, or full intensity), and I invariably find that my manual flash images are either too dark (2/3 intensity) or the highlights are burned (full intensity).