Fuji FinePix S700 vs Nikon D70?

[FishMan473]

I’m in the market for a high quality digital camera and I’ve narrowed my search to two very different cameras the Fuji FinePix S7000 and the Nikon D70.

I am an amateur (maybe someday semiprofessional, i.e. I hope to sell some of the images I produce) nature photographer, my primary interest is wildflower photography, but I also shoot the occasional landscape, or whatever interesting object or scene comes up. Basically, when it comes to what I want out of a camera, I want high quality, sharp, colorful, high magnification, macro images. If I can get a flower the size of a nickel to fill the frame I’m in heaven. For the most part, everything else is gravy.

I currently own a Nikon N65 with a couple lenses (including the G series 60 mm macro). About a year ago I bought a small 2 megapixel Sony DCS-20 as a travel camera. It has impressed me so much with it’s ease of image capturing and low cost per image, that the N65 has seen less and less use.

It seems like the D70 would be an awesome upgrade from my N65. But the price is a bit prohibitive, though not totally out of the question, seeing as I’m a broke grad student at the moment. This is especially true because if I sell all my SLR equipment I might just make the $700 cost of the Fuji, where as I only have a $250 body to sell if I buy the D70 (and maybe that telephoto lens and teleconverter I just don’t use often enough).

My main question regarding this option is whether my current lenses would truly be compatible with the D70. I thought I heard something about some image distortion at the edge of the frame when using Nikon digital cameras with non-D-series lenses. Does anyone know if this is true? I realize the D70 isn’t available just yet, but maybe some of you have an idea of what might work from using the D100 or just plain old experience.

The FinePix 7000 also seems to be a good camera. It is less versatile and expandable then a SLR, but it seems more portable and easier to handle (no need to swap lenses). I was able to play with both cameras at a shop, (well, with a D100 in place of the D70 attached to a G series 60mm macro) and it seemed that I could get a slightly smaller object to fill the frame with the Nikon. But, I don’t think I was using the “Super Macro” mode on the FinePix, just the regular macro mode. Will images from this camera be as high quality as what I can get from the Nikon?

Any comments would be helpful.

Thanks,
FishMan

[cdg82]

I just recently moved from an Olympus C-4040 to the Fuji S7000. I'm pretty happy with it, the super macro can get as close as a few centimeters, and there is a 6X optical zoom. It's not as good in low light though (F2.8 vs. F1.8). The shutter speeds range from 1/10000 to 15sec, f-stop from F2.8 to F8. I can't really find serious flaws in it, besides the fact that the 12Mpixel mode is nearly useless; the file compression is way too high, the 6M has much better detail.