Canon EOS Rebel 300D
 

My Canon EOS Rebel 300D finally arrived. It comes with a 55mm lens but I also purchased an additional 28-200mm zoom.

The megapixel for this camera is only 6.3, but I have been happy with it.

I must admit there is a real learning curve. I equate it to re-learning an SLR with a computer inside of it.

The canvas that I had access too, have been re-shot and re-posted through out certain threads.

To show an example, this was with the new Canon:

This one was taken with my Sony 3.2 megapixels. Such a difference $1300.00 (includes accessories and extra lens) can make. I belive the Sony was around $300.00

Can you tell me more about this camera? I have a 3.4 megapixel Minolta that's just not adequate any more and I need to upgrade. What differences do you see when you photograph subjects and paintings?

The lenses you got seem like what I might need too. Where did you get all your new toys?

Wow Beth! What a difference! The new camera catches the nuances in your painting so well. :)

How long did it take you to learn to use it effectively?

Here is a good source of information: Canon website for the Digital Rebel SLR

Thanks, Mike. I'll check it out.

Sounds like you're considering going digital too. What cameras are you looking at?

As I've said before, the only thing I'm giving up by not going digital is convenience. With my film camera I can still compete with high end digital cameras on quality. This fact keeps me holding on to film. And, the conspicuous consumption season is almost here which may bring down prices still further.

If I were to buy a digital camera today I would give this camera strong consideration on a bang for your buck basis. The Nikon D100, which I would love to have, is still around $1500 without the lens and has about the same horsepower as this Canon with a lens for about $1000 retail.

When I buy a camera I will usually get at least ten years of use out of it so I am very slow to commit.

Michele and Terri, I did a search on the photo sites for this camera. I was looking at this one and the new Sony with the built in zoom, since I did not have a lens that fit any digital backs.

Mike pretty much convinced me that interchangeable lenses would be the best.

for $1630.00 from Butterfly Photo in NYC, I got the camera with the 55 lens, one battery, recharger and manuals - I think that was the basic which was 900.00 - then for an upgraded kit, I received another battery, set of filters including UV, polarizing and another, the zoom lens, another battery, a 258 quick flash card (most of these cameras fail to mention they have no memory included in prices), a lovely camera case and an added quick recharge ac/dc car adapter.

With the zoom on, the lens is so heavy my tripod droops now, so I will look at a new one of those. I hope I didn't forget anything. The Nikon Mike mentions has more megapixels, but you need their lenses. I suggest if you are happy with your SLR now, check with the company and see if they have or will be coming out with a digital version or a back with mounts for your lenses. Most are.

This is my favorite camera review site:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs.asp

This is a great site for instruction:
http://www.photoworkshop.com

Here are two more examples, one of color and one of sharpness.

Sharpness (add pixel sample)

Thanks for the examples Beth. Were the two color samples shot in the exact same light (same time of day, same weather conditions outside the window)?

Could you tell me how much the extra kit with the second battery, etc, cost? Sounds like that was not included in the $1,600, right?

Michele,

I honestly can't remember what light the little girls was shot in. But it looks like it might have been outside vs. the color corrected. The new one is a bit too saturated for my taste, too.

Yes, all of that was included in the $1600.00, plus I think I forgot to mention the USB transfer Flash Card Hub, so I don't have to go through the camera.

Honestly, I think I connected with a really nice sales guy, then something arrived wrong and the next guy would throw something in.

But it is worth checking out Butterfly Photo's web site, just know how to speak NYC really well should you need to call them.

:)

Hi Beth!

Just wanted to thank you for posting this. I knew I needed a new camera but was feeling overwhelmed with all the choices out there. Just got one of these last week and am very pleased with it! :D ... Though am still trying to figure out how all those custom settings work!

Thanks!

I just purchased my own Digital Rebel, which I have been coveting for eight months at least. My father, who has always been a photography buff, has owned one about that long, and kindly let me try his out for a sample portrait shoot a few months ago. My husband also singled it out as probably ideal for my purposes (and within our price range, which is possibly more important!)

My previous portrait shoots were carried out with a Canon A-1 passed on from my father. That's a great camera with a lot of capability, and I got four beautiful lenses along with it, but when you're shooting lively children, the lack of an autofocus is a BIG liability, IMO. I learned photography on a Konica SLR thirty years ago, so I'm pretty comfortable with them, but on a professional level, paying for processing and printing eight or ten rolls of film for every shoot was getting out of hand.

I'm a digital fiend anyway because of my computer graphics background. My previous digital camera, a 2.1 megapixel Olympus, has all the quick shooting features, but a fairly short lens that distorts portrait shots. I intensely dislike stopping to change rolls of film and missing good shots. And I need to get everything into the computer as an intermediate step anyway, No matter how my photos were shot, I usually work from one 8.5x11 color inkjet print, a couple of grayscales adjusted for detail in light areas and dark areas, and one three-value posterized printout. So my instinct was to upgrade to a decent digital with SLR features.

I have the standard lens that comes with the Digital Rebel. So far I've used it for a number of experiments and one shoot last Friday with a ten-year-old girl. She wanted to bring her kite to the park where we shot, and I have a number of pictures of her running around and rather small in the distance. There I was wishing for a telephoto zoom, or the ability to keep up with a ten-year-old!

But otherwise the 18-55 zoom is good for my purposes. Lovely crisp images, nice color. I obviously haven't figured out all the shooting modes, because I keep getting underexposed shots, but that's all right; I take them into Photoshop and brighten them up.

For accessories, I have two 512 meg Compact Flash cards and an extra battery. My old card reader won't deal with the newer Compact Flash cards, unfortunately. So I will have to find one that does, because downloading two hundred JPGs to my hard drive with the USB cable takes an hour and eats up all the charge in the battery!

Laura

Laura the longer lens is a certain must, for just as you stated... distortion.

I have struggled with the lack of auto focus too, (for those not familiar with this camera - the reason we can't do this is it needs the proper amount of light so the flash will go off if needed, and we can not over-ride this function)

I have done OK with the kids, what's helped is having a multi burst flash card. Check and see if yours says this, it lets the camera reload and shoot much faster.

Also, in my humble opinion... anyone shooting digital for reference should throw out their printers! Invest in a good monitor and put it on a model stand. You lose none of the good detail that you purchased your camera for in the first place, and you can blow it up really big to see little things like the corner of an eye!

I have had mine for awhile now and I still struggle!

I have a Nikon D70 and an Epson R800 printer. The prints I get from this combo are unbelievable. The Epson outputs images that are superior to any prints I've ever seen, including those from a pro photo lab. The color is virtually lifelike. I am very, very picky when it comes to my reference material. I have a zoom lens (70-300) which allows me to zoom in and get as much detail in critical areas as I desire.

I'm about to go get a Nikon D70 with the 70-300 mm lens. (Thanks for the suggestion on the lens, Marvin, I think it will be much more useful than the 18-70mm "kit lens").

I wouldn't get the Canon Digital Rebel for one reason alone: it doesn't have a true spot metering which I use all the time on my current 3.4 megapixel Minolta.

Michele my Canon has three different meter settings, which one is this and what does it do to make it different? I wonder if this could help me with my painting copies? Honestly I don't think anything would help that?

Nikon was out of my reach, but the Canon is great, you and Marvin must have incredible cameras.

Marvin that is BIG for you to speak so highly of prints from your camera, you are picky, picky, picky. Are you ever just using your monitor?

Spot-metering basically means that you can tell the camera to set the exposure based on a very small area in the center (or other region you specify) of the viewfinder. It can be as small as one percent of the total viewing area. This is great for situations where the face is lighted differently from everything around it (which happens most of the time, for me.)

For example, if my subject is in a dim room with a nice strong light on the face I want to set the camera to expose precisely for the face, and not let the camera average out the light on everything. That would produce an over-exposed (too bright) face.

Or, if my subject was outside with sky behind them, again I'd want to use spot metering so that the face would be correctly exposed. Otherwise the camera would average everything and darken it all down, since the sky is so bright. Then the face would come out too dark.

Instead of spot-metering the Canon Digital Rebel used something that I think they called "center weighted" exposure or something like that. It's my understanding that the camera would tend to adjust the exposure for what was centered in the viewfinder but would still try and average things out over the whole viewfinder, with a bit of exposure adjustment for what was in the center region of the viewfinder.

With true spot metering the camera completely disregards whatever is outside the "spot" and doesn't try to "average" what's around it when figuring out the exposure. So the face is always correctly exposed, if done properly.

Later, if I want to get a nice exposure of the sky or the dim background to see details in the shadows I can center my image on those areas and take another shot. Or I can turn spot metering off and get an average overall exposure. For all portrait sessions I take many shots with all different exposures. The most important shots for me though are the ones that are spot-metered with a perfect exposure for the face. The rest of the exposures are just used for supplemental information.

Michele, welcome to the digital world. With the Nikon you actually don't even need a meter. Once you take your picture, you can view a histogram of the image. This lets you know if any of the values have been clipped off, be they shadows or high lights. You can adjust your exposure by 1/3 of a stop increments in either direction. There is also a high light preview which graphically indicates which, if any, light areas have been blown out to white. This is about as idiot proof as you can get.

I would also suggest buying Nikon Capture software which allows you to edit Raw files and make very subtle adjustments without compromising the original data of the shot.

The kit lens will come in handy if you can't get sufficiently back from the subject (in the event of a full figure) or want to get a wider expanse of background. I would suggest both. They are both great lenses for the money. When I purchased my 70-300 lens, Nikon was running rebates, so it cost me $250. It's great for zooming in to get critical detail. The 80-200 Nikon lens is even sharper but is much much heavier and costs about $1600. The rebates may still be in effect.

The D70 is a full featured camera and not a stripped down version of a better model. I love mine.

Beth,

I think the color and detail of my prints is much much better and and the detail is clearer than what's on my monitor.

I also have a consideration that looking back and forth from a painting, which is reflective, to a monitor, which is back lit, can't be good for one's eyes. I think it's better to go from reflective to reflective.

Then again I'm a pretty traditional guy, for a radical!

I've been shooting only digital now for about three years. I imagine they'll stop making film before long, the advantages to digital have been so great.

Thanks for the tip about the histograms on the Nikon D70. My sister's Digital Rebel (she's a pro landscape photographer) has that feature too and I forgot how useful she felt it was. Glad to hear the Nikon has it too.

As I mentioned in the other camera thread, I got the kit lens and will ask for the longer one for Christmas. Thanks for the suggestions.

I agree with Marvin. In my experience, you have to be able to operate between about 60mm and around 200mm. The trouble is, this always seems to span two lenses.

And remember that the Nikon D70 has a multiplier of 1.5, so the lens that begins at 70 will actually be 105. So, just as Marvin suggests, if you are in a standard residential room, you will not be able to operate effectively.

Being able to zoom in to get detail is a real nice feature to have, but, the fact is you can always move in closer. If I could only have one lens I would get the one with the kit, then I would start saving my lunch money for the added power.

The advantage of zooming as opposed to moving closer is that you avoid changing perspective or adding distortion. Distortion is a function of being too close.

Marvin, back to the monitor thing. :)

Is your printer a really good printer? I have an epson 1170, which is good - but not as good as my PowerBook G4 monitor.

So I could just be getting - not as good prints - as your printer produces.

The R800 is a great printer, far better than any other I've owned. Read the reviews. The raves are pretty impressive.

I agree with Marvin. Working from a digital file, there is a great deal of room for error, and for my photography skills, that's a good thing! My Epson printer has made it very convenient to generate all sorts of versions of my references and pin them up on the easel. I've tried working directly from a monitor on a number of occasions, but for my aging eyes, a print on paper works better.

Michele, I am not sure what you mean about not being able to spot-meter with the Digital Rebel. They call it 'partial metering', and it uses a small area in the center of the frame to determine exposure. You can take your reading close up as you would with a conventional light meter, then lock it with a button, back off and take your shot. My father pointed that feature out to me; it works in the non-programmed modes. Of course that procedure isn't as convenient as something like being able to select an exposure point in the frame while your shot is properly composed. Is that how the Minolta works?

The programmed modes in the Digital Rebel use "evaluative metering", which looks at the whole frame and what the camera determines to be the main subject and background, and makes an educated guess. If you set the camera for manual exposure, then it uses the center-weighted algorithm and gives you a viewfinder display to tell you if it thinks your currently set exposure is over or under.

I admit that I'm coming at the photography question mostly from the standpoint of a digital artist. So what works for me may not be broadly applicable. I know this stuff is not a priority for most artists with the classical training I lack, and why should it be? I'm a computer geek--what can I say? :) I have been editing and manipulating photos for years, so it's second nature to me. Great precision while shooting is not necessary for my purposes. I don't have to get the white balance right or really even choose a decent exposure, as long as I don't OVER-expose and burn out the highlights. All I truly need is enough pixels, reasonable sharpness and (the very expensive and complicated) Photoshop to fix everything else.

Laura

While I'm not a Photoshop whiz, I'm pretty good at it. No amount of Photoshop tweaking will give me color anywhere near as accurate as having a correct exposure to begin with.

It is important to me to be able to meter on a particular part of the face while my tripod and camera are in the position they will be for the shot. During a client photo shoot I have to work very fast and don't want to be taking the camera on and off the tripod to go up and meter the light on the face. (I don't have a separate light meter to do that.)

It's possible the Digital Rebel has something close enough to true spot metering to do the job, but in the list of specs the Nikon D70 did actually list "spot metering" while the Digital Rebel didn't. That was the deciding factor for me.

Michele, I think that the Nikon D70 with Nikon Capture software will give you the ability to really fine tune the color and exposure. Using the histogram insures that you have the tonal info you need. The highlight warning option alerts you immediately if you are overexposing any critical areas. There are many metering options.

I apologize if I've given any impression that I think this camera and some digital tweaking is the best possible way to go! Far from it; I probably would have bought something entirely different from the consumer Digital Rebel if I'd been able, such as the full-featured professional version or the Nikon.

I would certainly prefer to take my shots right the first time, and I hope with more practice that will become easier. However, at this point I don't have anything like the great technical knowledge of portrait photography that I see on this forum, and my experience is limited. Until I learn more, I have to make up for my deficiencies some other way.

Laura

Marvin, do you by chance know if the Nikon Capture software is sold separately? I have a Nikon 4300, but have never been able to get perfect color without ruining contrast or whatever on Photoshop. I have a HP printer that gives out very nice prints, sometimes as good as a photo. Thanks.

Yes Jimmy, Nikon Capture is sold individually for about $100. You can probably find it for less. The D70 comes with a one month trial version.

The Capture software gives you the ability to adjust images shot in raw mode. Raw images, Nikon calls them NEF's, retain more data. Any alterations to images performed in Nikon Capture can be reversed or adjusted, with no data loss, as long as the images are saved as NEF files. The images can be converted to tiffs or jpegs for use in other software programs.

I have a digital gray card that I place in either a scene or in front of a painting. You can use the software to adjust the white balance by pinpointing a spot on the gray card. The white balance setting can be saved and then used to correct other pictures shot in the same lighting. The really cool thing is that I can upload this same white balance to my D70. I can also upload adjustment curves.

Marvin, would you say that RAW files are a quantum leap in quality over files saved by the camera in Tiff or Jpeg formats?

The camera doesn't save in TIFF format. It only records JPEG and NEF formats, either individually or both together. I can shoot both a NEF and a JPEG at the same time. When I compare the two, the NEF is sharper if both are blown up on my monitor. Also the NEF has greater shadow detail.

Thanks!

LAURA...

Help - can you give me a step by step? Do you use a gray card?

Hey Mom, this is what I need, we need to track Laura down!

By Mom, I'm assuming you mean Mike O'neal McCarty.

Your Canon has a 9% center spot meter feature. It also has a AE lock which is by your right thumb indicated with an *.

If you have these features you shouldn't need to use the camera like a hand held light meter as Laura was suggesting. The spot meter effectively reaches out and does this at a distance.

You can practice this feature anytime. Just point the camera at something using the regular matrix metering, make note of the exposure. Now(must be in P mode for the spot metering for your camera I think) set the metering to partial (spot I call it on my Nikon) and point back at the same scene. Pick different areas of the scene, lighter - darker, and notice that the partial meter has created a different exposure based on the light in the center of the viewfinder.

Now, pick an exposure and press the AE lock button and then move the camera. You should notice that the exposure does not change.

If your shooting a face, try pointing your partial meter (center 9% for your camera) to an area of middle value and see if that doesn't give you a good balanced exposure of the face.

Great thing about these cameras is that you can practice and see the results almost immediately.

I thought you guys might get a kick out of the fruits of my labor this evening. Here is one of the shots of the very rambunctious 5 year old.

The 7 year old girl was beautiful, but the jury is still out on the one we'll use for the older boy.

Thanks for everyones help, and Laura, Mom, I didn't even get a chance to get this metering worked out this evening. I do understand why any kid under seven must be shot outside during daylight, you really need the ability to pick your camera up and run with them. This guy was behind the drape more than in front.

I just keep the back a somewhat "Leffel green". It was a major learning to shoot three children when you have a dog that likes small boys and a puppy who's, well a puppy.

Take me away Calgon...
P.S. Yes I can see the fill light was too strong from the cast backdrop shadow!

I feel your pain. Here I've got this brand-new, extremely cool camera with tons of modern functions that I am putting great effort into learning, and I spend most of my time during shoots jogging from one end of a playground to the other just trying to get the kids in frame, much less properly exposed. Who knew painting children's portraits could be such a strenuous occupation? :)

Well, I hope that AE lock stuff will eventually come in handy for both of us; I don't think I've used it yet in the five shoots I've done since my Digital Rebel arrived. The true saving grace of digital cameras as far as I'm concerned is being able to carry two 512 meg cards in my pocket instead of ten or twelve rolls of film for my vintage A-1. When I can shoot 250-300 exposures in an hour without stopping to rewind and load, I have to be doing very badly not to find eight or ten good ones in the bunch!

Laura and all the rest who own a Canon Digtal Rebel... we will no longer let those Nikon people brag and go on!

Go to a photography store and buy the book, Magic Lantern Guides Canon EOS Digital Rebel

You will be totally amazed at the things this camera can do that you would never have known by just reading your manufactures manual. Histogram in the LCD/viewer... yeah, we got that! It's all there.

Laura and Mike, thanks for opening my eyes to research this!

:thumbsup:

Ok Beth, Im a rebel with you now....got my rebel yesterday. Now to figure it out.