FYI,
a snippet from the article:
"Now, the Canon Rebel and Nikon D70 may be the first two $1,000 digital S.L.R.'s, but they don't exactly make an apples-to-apples comparison. The Rebel's $1,000 price includes a basic 3X (18- to 44-millimeter) zoom lens. (Make that very basic. The Rebel's body alone goes for $900, which tells you something about the quality of the starter lens. Pros gripe that this particular lens is not interchangeable with other Canon EOS cameras, either.)
But the Nikon comes with no lens at all. You're expected to spend another $300 for, say, the professional 3.8X 18- to 70-millimeter lens.
So what does that 30 percent premium buy you? For example, the Nikon has a zero startup time. You can flip the camera on and snap the shot in well under half a second. (The Rebel takes about three seconds to power up.)
And speaking of speed, the D70's Burst mode captures three frames per second for up to 144 consecutive shots, compared with four at the Rebel's top speed. You might wonder just how important the Burst feature is - how often, after all, do you shoot sporting events? - but it turns out that expressions, pets, children and other mercurial subjects also benefit from Burst mode. The tiniest turn of the corner of a mouth can make all the difference, and Burst mode increases the likelihood that you'll capture just the right one.
Both cameras offer extremely clear, easy-to-use onscreen menus, along with useful presets like Night Portrait and Sports. (Nikon's previous digital S.L.R., the $1,500 D10, lacks those presets.) Making manual adjustments is very easy, too: while holding down a button on the camera's body - Exposure Compensation, for example, to brighten a scene - you turn a dial that falls naturally under your index finger and watch the settings in the backlighted liquid-crystal display status window.
The Nikon, with its superior allotment of customizable settings, makes a better choice for veteran photographers going digital; the less expensive, easier-to-use Rebel might make a better candidate for digicam owners hoping to graduate to more professional-looking pictures.
Both cameras are solid and responsive, though, and both produce spectacular quality. At nytimes.com/circuits, you can see sample pictures taken by a $1,000 digital S.L.R. displayed side-by-side with the same photos from a $400 consumer camera. It won't take you longer than 1/250th of a second to see the difference."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/technology/circuits/25stat.html?pagewanted=all&position=