I am thinking to buy a Digital SLR. My choice is in between D70 and 20D. Has any Sajhaites have any experience or knowledge about these two cameras? Need help on deciding. Or if there are any other SLRs that are better than these with the same price ranges, any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

Lobo, what about getting D70s instead.Bought the camera for my brother and also used it for awhile before passing it to him.

Hey...what bout Digital Rebel XT?? whats the big difference betwn 20D and Rebel XT??
Was plannin on buyin a digital SLR...they say 20D is more professional Digital SLR .... but what does that mean??

DC_virus, a visit to the www.dpreview.com should clear your doubt.

D70 is basically an F100 with CCD instead of film. I find F100 to be the best camera out there (affordably professional). Also, you can mount any nikon lens in all its SLRs, including digital, as opposed to other cameras where there are different mount for digital and film. I think lens for nikon is cheaper than for cannon, because of many old auto focus lenses of the mid-90's. so, i would go for nikon (mostly because of personal experience with nikon).

But for portability and cost saving matter, I would get a Nikon 8900 (same lenes and upto 10x (optical) ~= 300mm with 2x and 3x lens adapters. The only disadvantage of this is that you cannot get images using less than 24 mm, where as on SLR you can go upto 10mm.

Sujanks, go for the F200. I am sure you can afford it.

If you can afford it I would stay away from the Nikon coolpix 8900 and get a real DSLR to which you can add lenses, flashes, etc over time... having a growing and adaptable system.

If you are willing to consider the price of the Canon 20D, then I would also look at the Nikon D200, which although slightly more expensive (list price $1699), and not as easy to get yet, is THE best camera you can get for less than $3000.

One decision you do need to make is whether you are going with a Nikon or Canon system. Both have their pros and cons. Canon tends to update technology more frequently (but this also means what you buy is obsolete quicker). Nikons generally feel better in the hand (better ergonomics), hold their value longer, and have a better flash system. And the website www.nikonians.org is probably the best forum for getting any question answered about any Nikon.

If you are interested in a used D70 I know someone on the US east coast who has a good one for sale at a reasonable price.

Neither Nikon D70 (upgraded version is called D70's' which is 99% the same except the bigger LCD) nor Canon 20D is better on absolute terms. Each one is better than the other depending on what you want to use for.Both cameras are superb. Lets say:

Fast Action Shots: For fast action shots and for sports photography 20D is the winner because it has almost twice the frame rate than that of D70s.

Low light situations: 20D is the winner because you can crank up the ISO setting up to ISO 3200. D70s can go up to ISO 1600 meaning 20D can get twice the brightness in its pictures if you were to shoot with D70s in the axactly the same low light situation with its highest ISO setting on.

Price, Image quality and over all ease of use: Almost the same while D70 is cheaper, smaller and lighter than 20D.

Portibility: Because D70 is smaller and lighter and easier to adjust quicker than 20D, D70s will be the preffered one therefore making it ideal for travel photography and for the use in the field. This is reason why many Pro-photographer also use D70 on dalily basis besides their heavy and bulky Nikon Pro-cameras like Nikon D2H and Nikon D2X.

Adjustibilty: Because lighting sitution never remains the same in the real world, D70s is far more easier to adjust to suit the ever changing lighting situation in the field.

Image quality: D70 comes with 6 MP while 20D with 8 MP. The difference is simply too close to see by your eyes. You will see significant difference only if you make prints that are bigger than 14 inch across in size.

Color sautartion: If you are a NOT a photo nerd dont worry about it but for me it matters and I see Nikon D70 is the possible winner because there are two places where I can jack up the color saturation as opposed to just one in 20D.

Flash sync: A strong advantage for D70 because it has flash sync speed of 1/500 as opposed to just 1/250 on 20D meaning the flash on D70 recycles faster so that you dont have to wait for the flash to recycle before you can take the next shot. This feature is important if you are using a SLR for event-photography sush as parties, ceremonies, dassian, wedding, pasni etc where you will be forced to use flash because of insufficient available(ambient) light indoors.

Image Sharpness: D70s is little sharp over all however you can to tweak the camera settings to either jack up or crank down the shapness.

WB or White Balance: Each people have their own taste so you can tweak the settings in both cameras to get your taste.

Menus: D70 is a lot easier to get around menus and change camera settings after all the lighting conditions always change in the real world so this the menus have to be easily accessable without fussing and getting lost a lot to be able to quicly change the camera setting.

ISO Setting: Canon has advantage becuase it can go to ISO 100 up to ISO 3200 while D70 can go from ISO 200-1600. I would have loved to see D70 offer ISO 100 because I love to see great color saturation on my pics.

Noise or Digital Artifacts: D70 shows more noise at higher ISO because it doesnt apply noise suppression filter as mush as it does in 20D. Therefore D70 images are noiser but sharper while 20D images are less noisierbut less sharper. In my experience, noise level on my D70s at ISO 800 looked ok for me.

Contrast: D70 offers more flexibility to move around and set the best possible contrast level based on lighting of a subject while 20D is less flexible.

Image quality setting: It's based on your preference. I prefer D70 because when writing with JPEG file because it offers file sizes of 3 image quailities while 20D offer only 2.

Battery life: almost equal. You can make about 1000 pics in average from a freshly recharged battery on D70.

Folders and file numbering: D70 is the winner because it's more systematic and chances you loose your image files and folders in your computer is far less. D70 never repeats a filename in the entire life of the camera.

Media and memory: Both use CF cards

Lenses: Equal because both Canon and Nikon has a huge line up of spectacular lenses and both cameras can use third party lenses like Sigma and Tamron with no glitch at all. Personally I dont prefer third party lenses.

Ohh by the way, D70s has bigger LCD and it comes with 2 inch LCD while 20D comes with 1.8 LCD.

Sunjanks
No way..D70 is not anything like F100 at all. D70 was developed from the scratch as a digital SLR camera in mind. Before the development of D70, Nikon didnt have any SLR camera body that was built as a purely digital camera. Yaa of course...Nikon D100 was a digital SLR that came out before D70 however the D100 was a digital camera built on a chassis of F-80 (also called N-80) which is a mid-range film camera. It was just like adding the latest avionics (aviation electronics) of the year 2002 to the body of Boeing 757 airplane built back in 1985.

F100 lent many of its features to its smaller cousin F-80 .

It is father interesting that F100 lent many of its features to F-80 and F-80 became the chassis for Nikon's first digital SLR, the D100.

Color saturation on D70s. I shot this image few days ago in my "make-shift" light box.

Shot on D70s at ISO 1250 at an outdoor event in Toronto. I guess noise level is ok.

another one from D70 at ISO 200

Thanks to iNepali, Dc Virus,Sujanks, Bhanja, Arnico and specially to Khaobadi, for giving your valuable time and excellent suggestions. I am a fan of Nikon as far as SLR goes, used it for 15 years and fully satisfied. Now, I am thinking to switch it to DSLR. My choice was D70, but I was not sure how Nikon holds its reputation for DSLR. Thanks to you guys that I am now sure that Nikon probably be the better camera. Thanks again. And oh BTW Khaobadi, the shots are excellent.

I'm a Nikonian and now I use both film and digital SLR. One of the greatest things about using Nikon equipments is that Nikon equipments such as camera body, lens, flashes are backward compaitable. You can use the any Nikon lens from the last 30 years on the latest Nikon film and digital SLR camera and still be able get the basic features that are important for photography.

Yaa of course the old lens did have many latest features so you wont be able to get them anyway, however if film SLR and digital SLR cameras are used on full manual mode, the pics you get will be as great as you would from the latest Nikon lens like 70-200mm f2.8 VR lens. The same story with the flash as well.