Testing let me know what you think

flash sync speed

Canon 300D / Digital Rebel flash sync speed is 1/200

Canon 10D flash sync speed is also 1/200

The sync speed is one thing, flash duration is another. The more power a flash uses, the longer the flash duration, the less power a flash uses the shorter the flash duration. However, for practicaal purposes, on these cameras, the flash duration is much shorter the flash sync speed, so this is a non issue. Any movement should be frozen, unless you are photographing bullets.

There are also hacks available that make some of the features disabled on the Digital Rebel available (disabled so as not to take away sales from the 10D).

The Canon EF 100 macro is outstanding, and is one of the sharpest lense in the lineup. It is not that hard to make a sharp macro lens, and they definitely nailed this one.

I use both the 10D and the EF 100 macro.

300D vs 10D

Kyle,

Not sure if you have been tracking the prices, but the prices of both recently dropped for the first time.

The 300D is selling for $830 body only, $70 drop

and the 10D is selling for $1380 body only, a $120 drop

Prices are from reputable dealer in NYC and similar price from a reputable dealer in Atlanta.

Either way, both have the same CMOS sensor, same Digic processor, so you get the quality.

Yuri

I like your thinking Kyle. Get a decent body and spend the money building a great lens selection. Good lenses are the backbone of any good system.

In over seven years of working at a camera store in Toronto, we had very few cameras come in due to parts failure or breaking down from use. The majority of gear came in because people would drop cameras, poke their fingers where they should not, send their camera to the bottom of a river or pond, open up the camera to see how it works and come in with all these extra parts after they put it back together etc.

The gear being made today is much more durable than even ten years ago. If anything the first thing to go is the shutter mechanism, and putting in a new shutter housing is not a problem.

The plastic feel, well that is personal. There is usually something better out there or that will be out there.

The stuff about color, well, you can make something any color you want. Computer monitors are not usually calibrated properly, so a file that looks good on one monitor may look like hell on another.

File sharpening can be set to from -2 to +2, so there is room for getting something to suit you. Besides, you normally do sharpening as your last step (in PhotoShop) and that is outside of the camera.

Nikon vs Canon and Sensor sizes vs Pixel clusters

I love the Nikon-Canon debate. I have owned both systems, and use both companies DSLRs at work, and see positives with both. Both are solid, solid systems. It is more a question of ergonomics and lens selection and company's environmental record for me.

Either way, you can get a great camera with a enormous assortment of lenses. If you wait another 6 months or a year, you will get a more advanced camera. This goes on for as long as they make cameras.

Canon is wholly owned by Canon, while Nikon is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi (massive multinational). One of the other subsidiaries of Nikon is a huge timber company that is stripping Indonesia of its virgin forests (destroying virgin forests where orangutans are found). Canon does not have such a blemish on its company record.

Canon has a huge budget for R&D and also has a sensor manufacturing plant - so they make all their CMOS sensor for the 300D and 10D and 1Ds and continue to innovate. Nikon innovates too, but from reading industry news, Canon's R&D budget dwarfs Nikons.

Canon also has lenses that I like and I sold my Nikon system years ago to buy into Canon's EF mount. Nikon still uses a mounting system that has been around for many decades - it has added features to it, but it is still the same basic system. Canon (to much uproar at the time) changed from their FD mount to the present EF mount to accomodate more electronics and other things that escaped my memory. There are rumblings that crop up every few years about an impending change to Nikon's mount, but nothing has materillaised.

All this blabbing from me is mostly irrelevant (apart from the enviro record), since it really comes down to the person behind the little box holding the glass. As you can see Tammy's photos are lovely as are Kyle's, as are a host of other photographers. A camera or a lens will only yield its potential when used by someone with good technique, a good eye for composition and good knowledge of the subject. I was always amazed at the customers who would come into the store, and buy stuff they read about in a magazine and then get upset because their pictures did not resemble the ones in the magazine. Then there were the old fellows who would come by the shop with their decades old screw mount Spotmatics, or their almost half century old Leicas and produce exquisite images. It is the person behind all the circuits and apochromatic coatings that decides what and how to photograph.

One last thing to keep in mind is the hype over megapixels. Sony's F828 boasts 8 megapixels - quite a lot. Consider though the sensor size and resulting pixel size. The aforementioned Sony has a sensor size of 8.8mm X 6.6mm -- whereas the more megapixel anemic Digital Rebel (6 megapixels) has a sensor size of 22.7mm X 15.1mm with a correspondingly much larger individual pixel size. So in this case the Sony's sensor covers an area of 58.08mm squared, whereas the Canon's sensor covers an area of 342.77mm squared. Don't believe the hype until you look into it further.

Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Minolta, Olympus, Sigma, Kodak ... all offer or about to offer at least one DSLR, so do your research and take your pick.

CD-Rs

Tammy,

Have fun in Alaska.

On the topic of CD-Rs, I have done a fair bit of research for work on this (archiving files etc.). Anyways, there is one clear leader of the pack in the world of recordable CDs, by a US company also! The company name is Mitsui (now called MAM). In any case they use a proprietary dye that is more stable than others as well as using silver and gold reflective layers. I have found them to be price competitive with higher end CD-Rs made by other companies.

Go to: http://store.mam-a-store.com/silver-cd-r.html

I use the silver and not gold, since some have complained of problems with the gold reflective layer in certain drives (lower end drives). No reports of problems with the silver reflective layer CD-Rs.

Also, the dyes in CD-Rs are more stable than the ones in CD-RWs. That is why for archiving CD-Rs are always recommended above CD-RWs.

If you are using CD-Rs as your primary storage, then go for the best. There have been reports of data loss in as little time as six months!

Yuri