Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel

I'll start with the bottom line first: this camera has great image quality for an extremely low price.

Moving from a professional Canon film camera to a Rebel can be a depressing experience. The first thing one will notice is the lack of a rear command-dial. To me, this one ommission is worth the upgrade price to a Canon 20D. Of course I won't be doing that anytime soon as I'm poverty-stricken. The lack of a spot-meter in this camera irritates me but is no longer an absolute necessity in this age of instant exposure determination with histogram included. I, however, waste a lot of time taking a picture, checking the histogram, dialing in exposure compensation, taking the picture again and hoping I got the exposure right this time round. Wouldn't it be soooo much easier to take one spotmeter reading instead of twiddling? Twiddling with your equipment all the time is one sure way to miss the shot. Speaking of missing the shot; it is usually helpful if you can actually see what you're shooting before you take the picture. When you first look through the viewfinder of the Rebel prepare yourself tunnel vision in extremis. You will get used to it, but tough luck if you like to focus manually.

Although the camera has a plasticky look, it does feel solid in the hands and resists flexing well. The bottom of the camera, however, is prone to scratches. My humble advice to anyone purchasing this camera is to void(!) your Canon warranty by downloading and installing a firmware hack available here. Assuming the site actually loads (it's a bit sluggish) the hack provides you with access to custom functions not ordinarily available. They include mirror lock-up, control of autofocus modes, ISO 3200 selection, and other goodies.

The camera takes about 2 seconds from turn-on to be ready for taking a picture. Not bad, but it can be faster. The newer 20D, 5D and Rebel XT are almost instantaneous in their turn-on times. Which brings me to digital obsolescence. Digital cameras are disposable. My digital Rebel magically turned into junk when the new XT 350, 20D and 5D were released; at least in the minds of buyers who want the most megapixels. People fail to realise that 8.2 megapixel cameras will take pictures identical in quality to the 6.3 megapixel 300D. The only difference will be a 15% increase in enlargement factors in printing. This is an irrelevant quantity - moreso since many users don't  enlarge beyond 8"x10" prints anyway. Nevertheless, just as no one will be lining up to buy your x386 PC, the same principle applies to digital cameras.

Noise at high ISOs only becomes objectionable at 1600 and above. Pictures can be made usable with Photoshop third party plugins like Noise Ninja or Neat Image, however. Better results can be accomplished by exposing the picture so that the histogram readout is as far to the right as possible without burning out the highlights. Compared to ISO 1600 film, the quality one can get out of this camera is astonishing. Another favourable attribute is the rather intelligent white balance alogorithms. No more need to worry about tungsten or flourescent lighting! This has to be one of the great advantages of digital. I shoot RAW files with this camera exclusively and I have the option to adjust the white balance to my liking in my RAW converter software afterwards.

The camera comes supplied with an 18-55 EFS lens as part of a kit. My recommendation would be to, instead, start off with the 50mm f1.8 lens or the 35mm f2.0 lens. Remember that the Rebel has an APS sized sensor so all lenses suffer a 1.6X multiplication factor. That is, a 35mm lens becomes 50mm, and a 50mm lens becomes an 80mm lens. Basically, buy the best lenses you can afford. My current lens is the EF 50mm f2.5 macro.

My final impression has nothing to do with the camera per se, but with my general dislike of the digital process. I really prefer using my old film cameras. For those of you into digital, this is a very good camera indeed. Don't be fooled by the hype surrounding newer camera releases; professional images have been taken with first generation 2 MP cameras. In fact, a prominent large-format photographer has claimed that the output from the digital Rebel printed at 8"x10" equals a print of the same size from a large-format camera!