D70 takes excellent pictures even with the factory pre-sets. However, by fine tuning some of the D70’s custom setting you can make straight out of the camera images even more impressive. This might even let you eliminate any post-processing you’ve been doing (or at least reduce it to a degree).

Here they are:
• Sharpening: +2
• Tone comp: auto
• Saturation: enhanced
• Hue adjustment: 0
• White balance: auto -2
• Exposure comp: + 0.3

Also, I set my Shutter speed (used with the flash) to 1/30 whenever I can - this allows for more natural light and lesser flash light, reducing the “damage” to the natural colors.

This will be a good starting point. Later you might replace Exposure comensation +0.3 with a custom curve.

The original idea was borrowed from the famous post published on www.nikonians.org by J3R “Great pictures straight out of the D70″. If you compare J3R’s suggested setting with the ones I published above you might notice that I went with a slightly “cooler” white balance. Personally I prefer “warmer” photos, but I found auto-3 was too agressive for me.